


Your childhood home is just powder-white bones                (and you'll never find your way back)

by Dovey



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abduction, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Genjutsu, Haruno Sakura-centric, Kidnapping, Medical Torture, Psychological Torture, Revenge, Sakura Retrevial Arc, Stockholm Syndrome, Survival, Survivor Guilt, Torture, Uchiha Sasuke Has Issues, itachi is not necessarily a good person just because hes not an evil one, revenge quest, shark summons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-04-25 17:59:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14384019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dovey/pseuds/Dovey
Summary: Sasuke is not the only one who worries he's getting too comfortable in his genin life. Itachi decides to add another motivator to Sasuke's revenge plans by kidnapping the teammate who wasn't a charismatic Jinchuriki. Sakura is used to being an objective for those around her, not a person, but even for her this is a little much.In which Sakura is held captive and learns what a genjutsu specialist can do to a person's mind, that sharks can actually make great friends, joins a dying clan, and gets regifted multiple times before she's finally strong enough to fight back.*while this fic contains explicit and graphic torture, there's no sexual assault.





	1. Chapter 1

Sakura is walking home from another day of exhausting D-rank missions, and considering her situation with all the cautiousness she can muster.

The truth is, Sasuke is _mean._ She had always known he was stand-offish, but that was part of his appeal for most of the girls- trying to melt his ice heart and earn his affectionate side. Unfortunately, Sakura was beginning to doubt he had one.

 _What, and just give up? Let Ino have him?_ Inner jeered, and Sakura shot her head up and gripped her fist in determination. _No way!_ She internally shouted, reminding herself that she had the edge over her competition- she was Sasuke’s teammate, and just because it wasn’t easy, didn’t mean she couldn’t win him over eventually! She pumped her fist in the air and pledged to herself, and the fading autumn trees around her,

“I won’t give up on Sasuke-kun!”

“How sweet.” 

She whips around, embarrassed to discover her promise was overheard by an adult.

He looks like Sasuke. It’s shocking, how close the resemblance is, and she considers for a moment that this might be a genjutsu. The sharklike man flanking him, however, is odd enough to dissuade her of the notion- he’s far too unusual to be part of an attempt at creating a seamless false world.

“Ah, uh, sorry! I didn’t know anyone else was around, uh, I’ll keep myself real quiet for the rest of the walk home.” She sheepishly promised, hoping they wouldn’t tease her for her overactive habits. Shark-man is looking more and more reticent about whatever it is they’re doing there, but the Sasuke-clone just smiles wider. It’s not a nice smile. Sakura hopes Sasuke has a much nicer smile than this man’s, considering how hard she’s working to see it.

“I’m afraid you won’t be finishing your walk, Sakura.”

She stumbled backwards, reaching for her pouch and feeling barely reassured by the press of her cold steel kunai that she drew from it. _And Sasuke had called us dumb for bringing all our gear to D-ranks!_ She brought the blade up between them and hoped they wouldn’t notice her hands quivering slightly. She’d never been in a fight before, and these men seemed much stronger than she could ever hope to be.

“That’s not funny!” She told them, slipping from a stumbling position to a more proper stance to allow herself to back up. Her only method of escape was if she could outrun them, and they’d slowly pressed forward until she’d backed herself into a tree. _At least they can’t attack us from behind,_ Inner reasoned, but it was a small comfort on a laundry list of concerns.

“Come on, ‘Tachi, can we get this over with?” Sharkman prompted, and she tried to take advantage of his obvious hesitance to make a dash  past him. It wasn’t him who grabbed her by the neck, but the Sasuke-double, and he held her up for inspection.

“As soon as my little brother arrives, Kisame. Not much point to this reminder if he doesn’t see it, after all.”

She lifted her legs to kick him in the chest, and he swatted them back. She’d dropped her kunai when he’d wrapped his hand around her neck, so she reached out with her hands to claw at him instead. He jostled her, warningly, and pressed biting nails into her own face deep enough to bleed.

“You’re getting annoying.” He informs her, and she stares vindictively up at him until his eyes shift red- _that’s not possible, only Sasuke is supposed to be able to do that!-_ and she finds herself falling asleep.

“I don’t like it.” Kisame huffs, and Itachi gives him a teasing smile.

“I never took you for soft-hearted, Kisame.”

“Oh, shut up, it’s just bad for our reputation, you know? I don’t want people going around talking about _Kisami the kiddie snatcher,_ okay?”

“Of course.” Itachi easily agreed, clearly not buying his partner’s excuse. “But I’m afraid it’s a necessary evil. My dear brother seems to be getting a little lax in his training. He needs this reminder.”

“Yeesh, and I thought my family was tough.” Kisame grumbled, and the pair began an amicable wait for the inevitable, a young girl enthralled in terrifying nightmares resting in between them.

It takes far longer than they would like.

 

-

Naruto knows something is wrong, because Sakura is always punctual. Sasuke likes to be early, and Kakashi is always way too late, but Sakura is always on time and yells at him when he’s a minute too slow, so he _knows_ that something is wrong when she doesn’t show up for their evening mission when they agreed to.

“She’s probably just sick of chasing Tora.” Sasuke scoffed, and returned to fiddling with his shuriken as they waited for the rest of the team to show up.

Naruto hated to admit it, but the real reason he knew something was wrong was because Sakura would never skip out on getting to spend time with The Asshole, especially the full hour or so they’re alone before Kakashi shows up. Normally she gets stuck talking to him, instead, which is why he doesn’t mind so much- but she always starts by trying to win over The Asshole with a new conversation topic. He has no idea what Sakura-chan sees in the boy, but it must be something pretty cool, considering she tries every single day.

Except now. Hence: something is wrong with Sakura-chan.

“That’s for sure.” Sasuke calls out, and it takes a moment for his meaning to register.

“Shut up, jerk!” Naruto called out, pouncing on his teammate to try and deliver a few earned blows, but he’s quickly knocked back off.

“Maa, boys, I haven’t asked you to spar yet.”

His focus shifted immediately, and as he sprang to attention, he yelled, “Kakashi-sensei, something happened to Sakura-chan!”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

“She’s not here!” Naruto replied, exasperated, because surely a jounin should have the ability to notice that much at least.

Kakashi cocked an eyebrow at his student, and Naruto collapsed in defeat. Why was everyone around him so dumb? “She’s _always_ here!”

“That’s observant of you, Naruto, but you mustn’t let paranoia get the best of you. What else could Sakura-chan be doing right now?”

Naruto refused to answer in protest. Sasuke, eager to move on to training, suggested, “She could be doing dumb girl things with the Yamanaka.”

Naruto pointed an accusing finger at the boy from his spot on the ground. “Shows what you know! She hasn’t hung out with Ino in _ages_. Ino’s still mad Sakura-chan got put with you instead of her!”

“Whatever! She could still be shopping, or whatever. Can we start training already?”

The second part was directed at their sensei, and Kakashi gave it a moment’s thought before deciding,

“How about we practice tracking today? Beginning by finding our late teammate.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but Naruto jumped up in elation. “Finally!”

“It’s just gonna turn out she stopped to pick flowers or something, dumbass, but fine.” Sasuke huffed, and the trio set off towards the path that Naruto knew Sakura always took to get to the village.

They’re only a few blocks in when a commotion breaks out, and a few seconds in they can finally make out what’s happening.

Civilians are retreating in and locking doors, low level nin are doing the same, and high-level nin are all heading in one direction. “Oh thank gods, it’s Kakashi.” One says, spotting team seven, and he takes a hold of their sensei’s shoulder and continues, “Missing nin in the village!”

“Ah.” Kakashi replies, but he shifts his stance ever so slightly so that his students are behind him. “Bingo book?”

The man nods eagerly. “One of them, mist roots, a seven swordsman- and the other is Itachi.”

Naruto has no idea what that means, but the words register with Sasuke before anyone else and he’s dashing in the direction the other high level nin are before anyone can stop him. Naruto charges after him, normally onboard with idiotic challenges, but this time-

“What about Sakura-chan? We have to warn her!”

Sasuke shakes loose from his grip and picks up speed.

“I don’t care about Sakura, Itachi is-”

The nin who’d arrived before them are sprawled in a circle, unmoving. Naruto skitters to a halt and nearly crashes into Sasuke, who’s frozen in place and staring at the man in front of them.

“Good thing she’s not awake right now, little brother, or else you might’ve broken her little heart.”

Itachi’s grin is maniac, and Sakura is dangling in a worryingly loose way. He’s holding her by the hair, and her eyes are fluttering beneath her lids, trapped in whatever nightmare Itachi placed her in hours ago. His tongue snakes out to lick off a splatter of her blood from his own face, and Naruto tries to leap forward only to be yanked back by the finally-arrived Kakashi. Kisame is muttering in the background, but refuses to interfere.

“I’d appreciate if you let my student go, Itachi.”

His voice is calmer than his grip. He’s staring at Sakura, inspecting for injuries and thankful for the signs of life that remain in her limp form.

“I wish I could, senpai, but I’m afraid that’s not possible. Sasuke-kun, you’ve been getting rather lazy with your training- I must assume it’s the fault of your _adorable_ teammates.”

He shakes her, and Sasuke _still_ cannot move, his initial pause long enough to trap him in Itachi’s genjutsu and keep him frozen, watching.

“Besides… I _do_ miss having a little sibling around.”

 


	2. The Rat for the Apple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the early days of captivity.

 

The sun is bright, shining in the glorious blue sky and warming Sakura’s skin as quickly as a cool breeze soothes it. The grass is fresh beneath her, slightly damp from morning dew but she doesn’t mind. Sasuke is next to her, sneaking glances when he thinks she isn’t looking, and she finally works up the nerve to say something.

“What is it, Sasuke-kun?” She asked, hiding her face by staring at her hands in her lap and letting her long hair fall in front of it. He peers at her, leaning in close enough that she can’t help but feel her heart stutter, and then he says,

“You have such pretty eyes, Sakura.”

“Sasuke-kun!” She admonishes half-heartedly, frantically trying to avoid looking him in the eyes and seeing if he’s lying to tease her. She cautiously sneaks a peak through her fingers, only to see he’s staring intently at her face, a slight flush to his cheeks showing she’s not the only one embarrassed by the confession. “Th- thank you.” She finally mutters, and she uses all her courage to pull her hands away from her face and return his gaze. 

“Can I have them?” He asks. Sakura isn’t sure what he means by that, and doesn’t want to promise something she can’t deliver. Does he wish he had green eyes, too? But he has such pretty black eyes, like dark nights or bitter dark chocolate! She  _ loves  _ his eyes, and she tries to tell him so, but he leans in closer and says, “Sakura, I want them. They’re so pretty.” 

His hand reaches out to brush her cheek, but she shakes her head no hesitantly. He pouts, and the grip on her face gets tighter. Sakura struggles for a second to pull away, and he shoves her back against the grass and her head into the dirt with just that one hand on her jaw, and when she tries to tug her head to the side he forces it in place. 

“Don’t be so selfish, Sakura.” He admonishes, and with his free hand he reaches down to scrape her eyes out of their sockets. 

The jutsu doesn’t break until she’s felt him tug and scratch at the insides of her eyes for hours, felt his sticky-bloody hands on her cheek, until she hears his chipper voice- based on a memory of sasuke so old his voice hadn’t even started to crack yet- say, “Thanks, Sakura.”, and the soft tread of his feet away from that spot on the hill. That’s when it breaks, and it’s disorienting to suddenly be able to see again, to feel the drip of tears down her face from eyes she still has.

It’s not the worst false-memory Itachi gives her about Sasuke, but it’s the first, and she has no idea how much worse it’s going to get. 

 

She finally spots the men watching her, adjusting to the dizzying lack of presence she contained and her reality. 

_ The floor is wooden. Windows are drawn, light shines through. Equipment is strewn about so they’ve had time to unpack. My name is Sakura Haruno, I’m a genin of Konoha, this is real.  _

She clenches her fists hard enough to draw blood where her nails bite into her flesh, and fixes her gaze on the sharkman, unwilling to risk the mystery Uchiha’s gaze so quickly. 

“What do you want with me?” She asks, and she tries to sound harsh but it just comes across as desperate. His eyes flick away, and he shifts awkwardly in place, tapping his fingers on the table next to his chair. He’s sitting like he’s confident, but his motions are telling- he moves like Hinata, like Sakura when she was younger. He’s uncomfortable and he’s bad at hiding it. 

“Itachi?” Kisame asked, looking up towards his partner, who was standing with far more confidence next to him and staring at Sakura with marked indifference. 

“She can do chores, I guess.” He says, and it’s a shockingly different voice from the one he’d used during their oh-so-brief fight. Was it an act, or a sort of bloodlust situation? Or a split personality, like hers could be? If it was an act, which was the real one? 

She was trying very hard not to think about hands or eyes or what happened when she wasn’t aware of her body. Did anyone even know she was missing? Would anyone care? She shuddered, forcing herself back on-task.  _ Treat it like a mission, it’s just a mission.  _

“You mean you didn’t plan ahead?” Kisame asked, obviously frustrated. Itachi shrugged. 

“Her purpose is served simply by being with us, and I won’t have her tagging along on our missions.” He gave her a considering glance, then, before nodding once. “Sakura, dear.”

There was silence, until she realized he was waiting on her to speak. “Yes?” She asked, voice barely above a whisper. 

“You can cook? Clean? Sharpen weapons?” Seeing her nod, he smiled at his partner. “It’s sorted, then.” 

She thought, dimly, that her childish wish had been granted: she was a Uchiha’s housewife in all about name, after all. She didn’t bother arguing.  _ Just a mission.  _ She’ll never be able to look at Sasuke the same way again. 

“The mission, Itachi.” Sharkman said, and she finally had a name for the Uchiha. Itachi smiled, nodding his head judiciously. 

“Oh, yes. Sakura, look up.” 

She’d been staring at her hands, and couldn’t bring herself to shift her focus. She heard him sigh, and then felt a hand on her chin, jerking her head up to look him in the eyes. 

“I don’t like it when you don’t listen to me.” He told her, sour-sweet in tone, and she distantly heard Kisame protesting the use of the Sharingan as she faded so quickly back into her head. 

\--

It was a few days of this, in-and-out, and she began to only tell the difference between the two by the hunger pangs she felt when she was awake. Itachi saw no need for ropes or chains or clever traps to keep her there when he can simply trap her in her own mind. She learns sharkman is called Kisame, and that no matter how uncomfortable he gets, he’s too loyal to let her go. She’s not sure if she respects that, or hates him for it, but at this point she’s realizing it doesn’t matter either way. At least he doesn’t tell Itachi that she begged him to release her, though, so she decides she can trust him as much as she can anything now- certainly more than her own eyes, her sense of reality. 

Kisame teaches her how to make the foods he likes, old family recipes. 

“My sisters would make this when my mom was in a bad mood.” He tells her, and she pays close attention to the spin of the ladle so she doesn’t have to think about her own mother, her friends so close they were like siblings. Let it drift through her, because if it sticks too hard they show up in her next nightmare, tearing her apart with words and sharp fingernails. Learning was relaxing, something she’d always thrown herself into to escape bullies and self-doubt. Kisame told her Itachi liked sweet things, and she spent a day digging through her memories for any recipes that fit the bill. 

The day she served sweetened bread for breakfast, Itachi smiled and didn’t use the sharingan. This was the start of her two new obsessions: the sharks, and pleasing Itachi. 

 

Kisame’s summons were sleek, vicious things. They circled the room, careful animalistic eyes tracking her every movement. Gills flaring, taking in air like it was the water they needed to survive. He left them guarding her whenever Itachi let her stay awake. The first day, she had stayed on one of the beds and not moved until she had to make dinner. By the third week, she’d begun to grow used to them, moving closer and closer to study them. The sharks never appeared in her nightmares. They belonged in the world of the living, and eventually this meant they were safe for her. She welcomed the sight of them, would risk brushing a hand against their rough hides as they swam past. 

She likes to think of them as her friends.The sharks will still eat her if she tries to leave, she knows, but she’s not dumb enough to try. Now she spends her days talking to them. They let her touch them when they brush past her, and the rough texture delights her. They’re her friends. She missed having friends. 

She thinks her old friends wouldn’t eat her if she did something wrong, but she has enough memories of them doing exactly that to unsettle it from certainty to just probability. She thinks she still has all her ribs, that her legs are the ones she’s always had, but she can’t say for sure. She can’t. 

It’s tough to please Itachi. More often than not she fails. Sometimes, he seems to view her as a doll, dressing her up in new clothes and dying her hair black, lets her keep her eyes shut tight around him. He plays with her hair, has her sit down to eat with them, reprimands and teases her for her poor manners in comparison to the Uchiha standard. Others, he ignores her completely. She likes those ones best, when she can work quietly and suffer silently, turn her attention to what she can pick up from Kisame and she doesn’t have to worry too much about what he wants. The worst days are when he seems to hate her, mutters about Konoha and Sasuke and everything but her name. He’s scariest like that, and it’s the only time he manhandles her hard enough to leave bruises. He yanks at her hair and will send her back into her mind at the slightest annoyance, and she has to be extra careful on those days to not be wearing her genin headband or else he’ll get truly furious. Those days don’t happen often, but when they do, she mostly resigns herself to her fate and tries her hardest to stay out of his way. 

The only consistency is that he always has her braid his hair. 

She hates it. She’s slow and methodical about it, because he doesn’t like it if she yanks or tugs too quickly, but the braid can’t fall loose throughout the day either, so she just has to keep the wefts tight in her grip but cautious. She sometimes has nightmares about it, about his hair getting longer and longer and she can never seem to reach the end of it, so she’s stuck there, next to him and her arms growing sore but she can’t stop or else he’ll get mad. It’s never good when he gets mad.  Sometimes he talks to her while it happens, about the latest mission or if she cooked the meal right, sometimes stories about Sasuke as a child. Sometimes he ignores her completely, lashes out at any reminders that she’s there, but she likes those times better because it’s easier to hold her breath and her tongue than it is to know what the right thing to say back is to the man who controls every aspect of her life.

She starts to stare at the kunai left behind, not for an escape attempt- she’s not so foolish or desperate for that, not yet, she has faith in Konoha and her sensei and that they’ll come for her still- but just to cut her hair. Rip it out, if she has to. It’s almost as long as Itachi’s and she hates the reminder it serves, drifting in front of her vision. It’s greasy, dirty, and knotted. She likes how awful it looks, at least, because Itachi takes such good care of his hair that she can’t make that mistake. 

She doesn’t cut it off. At first, it’s a futile act of protest, a declaration she’s not going to give up hope that she’ll return to Konoha and everything will go back to the way it was, and her long hair used to be a point of pride. Now, she leaves it long because she knows it’s not her choice.  This is not her body. It’s Itachi’s, and it’s his decision to make. She prays one day he’ll grow sick of it and demand she chop it off. It’s the most she can hope for, sometimes. 

 

She waits. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It Gets Worse Every Minute, the Taxpayers.   
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=107&v=EIS_EHoGd5o
> 
> "My lovely city, my lovely danger.  
> The bars of the cage, and the trash in the gutter, and the people coming out of the clinic:  
> It gets worse every minute- it gets worse every second you're in it."


	3. All my love's wrapped in shades of red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before she breaks.

Kakashi says she’s his favorite student, and that while the boys got lucky, they never had her determination or intelligence. He says he’s sorry he didn’t focus on her earlier, but the boys needed the help more, and he knew she was responsible enough to understand.

She glows under the praise, and when he promises to teach her a special new jutsu. 

He takes her hands and guides them into the proper form, and she can feel the power well up in her like never before. Finally, a move of her own! He guides them into the second form, and she barely notices his grip get tighter on her fingers in the excitement of it all. 

“What’s next?” She prompts, when they stay in that second form for slightly too longer. “Sensei?” 

He leans down to smile at her, eye to eye. “You wanted this.” He tells her, calmly, and then he bends her fingers back until the bones snap. She cries, sobbing for him to stop, but he doesn’t, and she can’t pull away from his iron grip. Some of her bones puncture through her skin, but most stay shattered inside her mangled fingers. 

“Don’t worry Sakura-chan, I can fix them.” Kakashi says, his voice the same reassuring tone as when he’d once promised all three of his genin that they would survive Wave. “This is the only way to get your hands to form the seals right.” 

She sniffs, tongue bleeding from when she’d bit it in her panic, and asks, “Really?”

He draws out his kunai, carefully slices her hand open, and begins to rearrange the bones. Over the sound of her screams, he admits, “No, not really.” 

It’s the last thing he says for a while. 

It takes her longer than she’d like to realize it’s not real. Far too long. But eventually, she realizes that being stuck, awake, in that kind of duress- she’d have passed out at least once, if it was real. It’s a genjutsu, the reality of it hitting her with memories of her kidnapping and her captors.

“You’re not real.” She says, and kakashi hums that little hum he would use when Naruto accused him of lying about why he was late. “I won’t wake up anyways, will I.”

It’s not a question. He smiles at her and says, “See, that’s why you’re my favorite, Sakura-chan. Always so clever!” 

When Sakura comes-to, it’s only been a few hours, despite feeling like days. Her world is blurry with fuzzy edges, and she can barely make out the man in front of her. There’s drool on her chin that she doesn’t bother to wipe off, and she can feel cramped muscles she doesn’t bother to move. 

Then she spots that the man has long hair, and she snaps to attention as fast as she can, because that means it’s Itachi. She doesn’t move fast enough, because by the time she can register what his expression is he’s frowning. 

“You can be so frustrating, Sakura-chan.” He tells her, a hand in her hair that’s loose right now but could so easily tighten and yank. “I keep trying to teach you, and you keep  _ failing. _ ”

She waits too long to respond, still not sure if this is a day he wants answers or just a silent verbal punching bag. His grip tightens in her hair, and his stare grows more intense. “Sakura-chan, honestly, you were supposed to be  _ smart. _ The village thought  _ you _ could help Sasuke-kun?” He sighs, letting her hair drift out of his hand, and steps back. This, though, is enough of a signal for her, and she moves forward to stand on wobbly, painful feet. 

“I’m sorry, Nii-chan.” She says, and she keeps her posture small, shrunken. “I’ve been trying really hard.” 

She wonders if it’s just her size that lets Itachi pretend she’s Sasuke, or if her old crush really did used to act like this. It’s hard to picture the bitter, regal boy as an adoring little brother stuck chasing for approval, but it’s not impossible. Either way, it works. She picked the right response, assessed his mood just right, because his expression turns doting and he doesn’t reach for her face again. He likes doing that, controlling where she can look and when, snapping her head to attention if she doesn’t do it herself fast enough. This is leniency, and Sakura is greedy for it, so she forces a smile and lets her desperate desire to please shine through. “Itachi-nii, please, is Kisame-kun too busy to practice?” 

Itachi chuckles, and pokes her forehead, before flicking to the other side of the room where he’d laid out a map of Fire Country. “No harm in asking him, little brother.” 

“Thank you!” She says, and she hates that part of her means it. 

She rushes out the door to find Kisami, his training being the only thing of interest for her to focus on in the past weeks. It’s not often she’s allowed, but he teaches her katas she can do in between chores and punishments. She has to do something, anything, or she thinks she might go crazy. She’s not entirely sure she hasn’t already, but she doesn’t press the thought. 

Kisame has her demonstrate the latest kata he taught her, and gives a nod of satisfaction. “Start doing it with weights.” He tells her, and when she looks at him a little blankly, he adds, “Hold the ricebag in your arms when you do the leg portions. Try doing it one-armed, if that gets too easy.”

The ricebag is at least fifteen pounds, so she doubts it will be easy. She nods in affirmative, and he pats her on the head. She keeps herself from flinching away. He’s not Itachi, he’s not about to tug, she just has to remember that. 

“Can you teach me how to use weapons?” She presses eagerly, even as she begins to sweat from running through the forms yet again. He seems to delight in her excitement, but withdraws at the last second.

“Itachi wouldn’t like that, kid, sorry.”

She waits, biting her lip and thinking, and they practice silently together for a few minutes longer. “What about ninjutsu?”

He contemplates this. Sakura never thought a missing nin could be so prone to thoughtfulness, especially one she knew for outbursts and something akin to bloodlust, but he’s a far more careful creature then she first realized when it comes to the effect of his actions on others.

“...alright, but you shouldn’t let him know, just in case.” He tells her. 

The first thing he teaches her is simple, a c-rank to call forth a small wall of water. It’s beautiful. It drains her chakra so quickly she faints on her second attempt. 

When she wakes up, she can feel herself smiling, and see Kisame looking at her with confusion. (It’s not revulsion like Itachi-nii would have, seeing her fail so bitterly, so she doesn’t mind). 

“I haven’t woken up without a nightmare in a while, Kisame-san. It was lovely.” She explains.

His face is a war of emotions, but eventually he settles on refraining from showing anything at all and helps her up. “I have an idea to help with your shitty chakra reserves, kid.” He tells her, and then hesitantly adds, “And it might keep ‘tachi from using his mojo on you so much, if you’re lucky.”

He jerks under her hug but she clings tighter for it. She  _ loves  _ this man in a way she’s never cared for anyone before, and she knows distantly it’s ridiculous to be thankful to a man keeping her captive, but she can’t help it. Sometimes it feels like they’re both trapped there by Itachi’s whims and tantrums, governed by laws neither of them fully understand, and he’s her only solace from hours of labor and nightmares and mind games. This makes him far more valuable, far more necessary, than any other human has been in her life before. Her world is two people, now, and Kisame is the nice one. 

__

 

It’s another three days before Kisame tries out his idea, and Sakura waits eagerly and on edge. She nearly shatters a dish when she finally overhears the man bring up the idea to Itachi-nee, but manages to catch herself just in time. Risking upsetting him now would be idiotic, at best. 

“We can tire her out with Samehada, you know. Give your eyes a break.”

Itachi presses his fingers together, much how Sasuke-kun used to.  _ Don’t think about that.  _ Sakura is sick of nightmares about Sasuke. 

“Are you implying I’m not strong enough to trap a little girl, Kisame?” He asks, and Kisame winces. Not for his own sake- Itachi is a surprisingly good partner- but for the girl he’s grown to worry about in their care. He knows who will suffer if he words this wrong. He holds up his hands placatingly, offers an attempt at a grin.

“Hell no, man, it just seems like a waste of your time, you know? And a little extra chakra never hurt me, you know?”

It seems to calm the man. Sakura forces herself to continue cleaning the cooking pan, desperate to hide her investment in the conversation. 

“You have a point.” Itachi-nee says. “We can try it out for today.”

 

It hurts, the first time. It saps her of all her chakra so quickly it feels like a part of her is getting torn away. But she sleeps soundly from the exhaustion, too weak to do anything for the hours her captors are gone, and she wakes up without an residual pain or fear like she’s used to. And the next day, when her reserves finally refill, there’s just a little bit more there than before. Kisame explains it in hushed tones over breakfast, as Itachi surveys the land for potential traps. 

“You need to use up your chakra for your amount to grow- just like pushing muscles to fatigue.” 

Kisame has found a way to keep her safe from Itachi’s gaze, at least for a while. It’s practically a routine, now- days to develop her chakra, and then ones to use her muscles on chores and her mind on surviving Itachi’s torture. If she squints, lets her worldview tilt and shift like it does so willingly without her say in the matter, she can pretend that she’s just a genin lucky enough to be an apprentice. 

“Thanks, Kisame.” She says, picking up the dishes to clean them. 

“Don’t thank me, kid.” He mutters, but she doesn’t hear it, happy enough at her small break to hum as she works. Her hands gloss against the side of the nearest shark, another reminder that this is real,  _ real,  _ not just a fragment of a figment about to turn against her. 

It doesn’t save her all the time, but she’s started to count every day as a victory. She knows how poorly she’s keeping it together, how often she’s starting to slip in and out of the delusions Itachi demands. Sometimes she forgets she was an only child. Sometimes, she forgets about Konoha. She needs this, every day she can breath and feel her ragged lungs and pretend they’re still her own.

She can still hope, and she owes Kisame for that, complicit or not. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I’ll be fine on my own, she said, I don’t need you inside my head  
> I'll be fine on my own, she said, all my love's wrapped in shades of red"  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS-FKKqH_eU


	4. clawing at the ceiling of his grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she breaks.

Sakura went on like this, day after day, time after time, maintaining the thinnest grasp on hope. She’d realized by now that Konoha would never come for her, but surely Kakashi-sensei… he’d spoken so often of never leaving a man behind! Of never abandoning your teammates. Surely, he would…

Eventually, she gives up on him. It wears on her, the memories both false and real, of how often she was left behind for the good of the rest of the team, and she knows Kakashi would never risk Sasuke’s safety for her own. But still, she maintains, Naruto would never give up. Naruto- Naruto  _ loved  _ her, despite how often she tormented him to try and convince him otherwise. The boy saw a people that hated him, and wanted to be their leader, never hesitating to push on and chase that dream. Surely, surely, he at least will come for her. He’ll use his way with words and golden smiles to earn himself a small army, even, and he’ll burst in dramatically and foolishly and save her, like he’s always wanted, and she’ll go with him. She’ll leave. 

So she tries to remember. Tries to keep track of where they go, what Itachi and Kisame do, in an effort to be useful when she’s finally back home. She’ll learn what she can and prove herself an asset, and she’ll never leave Naruto’s side ever again. She does her chores easily, pushes herself in training so that she’ll be helpful when she’s put back into the system, works herself to the bone rehearsing jutsu that Kisame teaches her on the sly. She’s mastered a few techniques, now, at least theoretically, though she’s mostly too drained of chakra to put it to the test. She hopes that just means it will be harder to detect her when she’s finally saved and whisked away, one less chakra path for Itachi to chase. Perhaps she can even talk Naruto into saving Kisame, too- it seems unlike Naruto to ever leave a good man behind, after all. 

And then, finally, one day, her legs tied together to keep her from wandering, with truly itchy, course materials,while she’s cleaning the dishes and considering what to cook for dinner, she hears the creak of the door. She looks up cautiously, in case it’s Itachi-nee in a bad mood and his sharingan eyes already out, but instead-

The glass in her hand nearly clatters to the floor before she catches it swiftly, panicked at the noise it might make. Naruto!

Naruto was here! They could escape! Her heart was already racing, fluttering in her chest, and she gripped the counter for a moment for stability. He held his finger up in a ‘sh’ gesture, and she kept herself as quiet as possible as she watched her savior slip over to her quietly. She takes back every mean thing she’s ever said- no, thought!- about the boy, every time she’s ever doubted him. He’s here, creeping along the floorboards softly enough to draw a sound. He doesn’t bother to untie her, in such a rush he is to get her out, and he swings her over his back and hops out the window in a matter of seconds. The ropes tangle together, constricting across her in an uncomfortable way, but she can’t bring herself to care. It’s dizzying, to see so much sky and taste the fresh air after so long, without the burden of Itachi hovering in the corner of her eye.  

He sets her down in Suna territory, the middle of the desert, far from where any patrols could reach her. It must finally be a safe enough distance to untie her. 

She smiles at her teammate with all the force she can muster, every bit of love and gratitude she can find in her body. She will never, ever,  _ ever  _ berate him again, call him mean things or side with Sasuke over him in an argument. Naruto is the kindest, most wonderful-

He tightens the ropes. Turns the tangles into proper knots.

He smiles at her, and it’s not a Kyuubi smile or a clone-disguised-as-naruto smile; it’s his free-bowl-of-ramen, beat-sasuke-in-a-spar, sakura-chan-called-me-funny kind of smile. It’s sincere, and honest, and so distinct, a common presence in so many of her memories of team seven. 

He holds his finger up to his lips. “Sh.” he says again. He leaves her there, and does not come back. She swears he sticks out his tongue at her as he leaves. 

She prays to god that this is another of Itachi’s nightmares, and she waits. The ropes chafe, and the sand mixes in with it and rubs her skin red and bloody. She burns under the sun, and it’s not long before her mouth goes from dry to desperate. 

She sees the stars come out and recede, goes from the burning heat to freezing cold and then back again. She dies when she's knocked around by a sudden sandstorm, buried into the sandgrains of a dune and she dies of drowning inside of it, lungs filled with sand and trapped pleas for help. 

She wakes up in the room again, drool dripping down her chin, body cramped from its protective curled position, and can’t bring herself to weep. Can’t bring herself to move. For all she knows, this is just another layer to the genjutsu, just another heartbreak and stolen hope around the corner, and she doesn’t care about making herself presentable for it. She doesn’t care if it comes. Let it happen, Itachi-nee has nothing left to rob her of, and she’ll be damned if she wastes her time fighting him any longer. 

She drifts away. Her head is empty and her body stiff and it’s as if Sakura no longer exists. That makes her happy. 

Kisame-san finds her like that, all emptied out and useless, and for the first time in a long time, he feels regret. But not enough-never enough- to even consider letting her go. She doesn’t respond when he tries to get her to move, doesn’t even respond when Itachi comes back. Kisame is reminded of Sasori’s eerie puppets, brought so close to life with artistic grace that it was nearly true, but always falling short. Whatever Itachi had shown her, it was enough to finish carving her out, just like their distant wooden teammate. He dreads to see what she’ll be when she wakes up, if she ever does.

It’s hours later- a new day dawned and left, and a new campsite with it- when she finally comes to, and she finds herself clean and stretched out and in pretty formal clothes. If she had the presence of mind, she’d be relieved that she wasn’t covered in her own mess, or worried about where she was. She thought neither of these things. Instead, she found herself wondering vacantly about the sharks. 

They swam about her, pretty things, all distant-close and fuzzy like a dream. Her hands drifted up, and she traced patterns in the air and found constellations in the movement of the sharks above her. So pretty. She wished she had teeth like theirs, or gills. She could go somewhere cold and dark and wet, where no one else would ever want to go, and she’d be safe there for it. She would eat herself there, piece by piece, until nothing was left and she’d die, like the poor snake in the Academy books that mention paradoxes. 

“Zabuza, why are your sharks so far away?” She murmers, and Kisame startles at her words. 

“It’s Kisame, kid. You know that.” He says, but he’s not really sure she does. 

“Kisame.” She tries it out, rolls it on her tongue. “Kisame-” It sparks something. Not a sense of defiance- that’s long left her- but memories. Connections. Her world shifts back into focus, even if it’s tilted at an entirely new angle. “Do you know what Itachi will do with me?” She asks. The sharks aren’t there, after all, she realizes. She can’t use them to remind her when she’s out of a genjutsu anymore. A pity. “Will I do chores forever?”

“I- I dunno. Probably not.”

“If Sasuke doesn’t kill me when he kills Itachi-nee, would you do it instead?” She can’t imagine the boy sparing her, but still. She doesn’t want to be a burden on nice Kisame, and he doesn’t seem to like having her around so much. He shudders at her words, pats her on the head.

“Just go back to sleep, Sakura.”

She does. She can’t tell the difference.

Itachi seems to realize what’s happened, because he stops putting her under so frequently. No need to force her here, when she no longer tries to leave. The concept of escape is foreign to her, frightening. Sakura lets him dote on her without hesitation, finds herself lost in chores far more than she used to be. Kisame keeps teaching her new techniques, but she can’t figure out why. Now, when they set her to tasks, they have to pay careful attention to make sure she stops. Often, she’ll keep going until she collapses, so unclear of limitations and so disconnected from her body she’s grown. She grows stronger from this, muscles turning firm and bruised. Her hair is limp, twisted, and Itachi finally cuts her hair, short and spiked like Sasuke’s. She loses focus halfway through, so panicked at the scissors near her neck, and when she wakes up Itachi is humming and lazily playing with the shortened pink strands. 

She thinks, perhaps, this means she’s finally survived the last of the changes. She still trembles when she does Itachi-nee’s hair, but she’s perfected the art of reading his moods. Kisame is kind, teaches her new things every so often, pretty tricks with water that dazzle her in the daylight, soothing recipes at night to earn Itachi’s favor in the future. She thinks this is the end of it, until Sasuke finally comes for Itachi- because she’s realized, now, how foolish it was to hope for anyone to come for  _ her.  _ But Sasuke would chase down Itachi to the ends of the earth, and kill him, and then kill her, for reasons she can’t remember but are certain must be true from how often she’s lived them. She thinks maybe he hates her eyes, or her voice, or her terrible lack of motivation in life. 

She’s wrong. 

She has no idea how much time has passed- can’t even tell by her body, so stunted is her growth- when they  reach a swampy land. She feels the sting of mosquito for days until Kisame teaches her how to sour her blood to them, hears the call of beasts she’s never heard before late at night. Itachi sometimes promises to throw her to them, and sometimes pets her hair and promises to keep her safe, but either way, they wade deeper and deeper into the marshes until her feet are used to being soaked and the humidity is slick like sweat on her skin. Kisame carries her through the deeper parts, teaches her water walking along the way, and when she goes vacant and empty as she does, he hefts her in his arms and keeps her far away from the carnivorous plants. 

“Where are we?” She asks, though the name of it is on the tip of her tongue, Academy lessons on other countries that once came so easily drifting through her head like mist. Itachi-nee says, brusquely, 

“Oto.”

“Why are we here?” She asks. 

“To give you away.” He says, and Sakura drifts away again, leaving Kisame with a hollow body to carry on to hell. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Find him, find him,   
> tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters,  
> Drag him to a hole until he wakes up, naked, clawing at the ceiling of his grave..."  
> \- Mariner's Revenge Song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=126&v=lEmy2DBaeTc


	5. Hung high and dry where no one can see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Konoha and Oto.

Kakashi wakes up in the hospital, one of his students at his feet and the other by his head. 

“Sakura-chan is-” Naruto begins, and Sasuke says at the same time, “Itachi got away-”

Naruto shoots Sasuke a glare and repeats, “Sakura-chan got  _ taken.  _ We have to go get her, sensei!”

Kakashi’s heart breaks, because they can’t. 

Sakura is- Sakura is sweet, and silly, and has a large civilian family well known for their way with a needle, and she was his responsibility. She was also, relatively speaking, a nobody, to the infrastructure of this village. No one in their right mind would sign off a mission to chase down Uchiha Itachi so they could reclaim anyone short of the Hokage himself. There’s no one capable, even, of pulling off a mission like that. Sakura is, for all intents and purposes, dead to them. 

“Sakura...is not alive.” Kakashi finally says, watching Naruto reel back and open-mouthed search for words he can’t find. This is the only way he’ll keep Naruto safe, keep the boy from running after her and earning himself a missing nin status and- a jinchuuriki with a status like that won’t survive. 

“But I saw Itachi take her.” Naruto whispers.  _ I didn’t stop him  _ goes unsaid, but heard. 

“He would never keep a burden alive longer than a day or two, Naruto. I’m- I’m sorry, but she’s already gone.”

It’s not a total lie. If Itachi has her, she soon won’t be much of a person at all. So focused on Naruto, an overwhelming fountain of emotional discharge the boy puts off, Kakashi doesn’t see how the words hit Sasuke. The boy’s eyes shutter, his hands fall to his side, and his chin sinks. Naruto is inconsolable. 

“Will her name- will it get put on the stone?” He finally asks. 

“I’ll make sure of it.” It’s the least he can do for her. Certainly more than he’s ever done for her before. Lots of things weigh on his conscious, late at night, but he already knows that this one will dog him like few others.

Rin will finally have a friend to haunt him these days, he thinks with some aggrandizing self-pity. Same age, similar disposition- how many young girls will he fail so personally before they finally get their revenge? He hopes that it’s soon. Perhaps their revenge is that it won’t be. 

\--

Sasuke follows the little girl, letting her take his hand as she smiles up at him. 

“Thank you so much, nii-san! I always wanted a big sister!” She told him, gap-toothed grin forcing him to smile back. His little sister was so sweet and trusting, always happy to spend time with her big brother she admired so much. 

She’s lead him into the family room, and for a second he’s worried Fugaka is about to tell them off. Instead, Kaa-san and Fugaka-sama both grace him with welcoming, gentle waves. 

“Thank you, son, we’ve always wanted a daughter.” They tell him, and he can hear the pride in their voices. He’s finally done something right, and he can feel his chest warm in delight at the knowledge.

He sees the Uchiha crest on her back first, her long pink hair second. It’s impractical at that length, but it’s not like she has anything to worry about with teammates as strong as him and Naruto. She turns to face him, blushing under the attention. 

“Oh, Sasuke-kun! Thank you so much.” She holds her hand out for him to take, his little sister having let go of her grip to run over and cling to Sakura’s leg, joyful at being reunited with her new big sister. Mikoto has a hand on the girl’s shoulder, a gentle reassurance for what must be a scary reunion for the girl. 

“Thank you?” he asks, barely thinking about it. Everything is hazy and warm and gentle, like a faded memory he’s finally reclaimed. 

“I’ve always wanted to be like the Uchiha!” She tells him, and his little sister laughs at the words and promises her she’ll be the  _ most  _ Uchiha when they’re done with her. It’s odd, though, because he can’t remember the little girl’s name. 

She hadn’t been born in time to have one, he remembers, and he feels dizzy at the realization because it doesn’t make sense. He didn’t have a little sister, and Sakura is not- 

He stumbles, and his back hits against his brother. Itachi, the bastard, he can’t be here or else- Oh.

They’re all dead. 

Itachi is gone, but his presence in this dream was enough, and Sasuke can now see his family for the ghosts they are. Pale, bloody creatures- red lips and red throats, and their smiles are taunting reminders. 

“Thank you so much, Sasuke! We were getting so lonely.” Mikoto says, and her grip on Sakura is hard enough to leave bruises. Sakura doesn’t seem to notice, letting the woman draw her closer with a small laugh. “You should take better care of your teammates, son.” Sakura’s face is still bleeding from where Itachi had held her, her neck at an unfortunate angle from how often she was dragged around by her head. 

He wakes up to piss-soaked sheets and sweat-stained clothes. 

He hasn’t had a nightmare like that in years, normally too exhausted from his training to dream at all, and never so elaborately when he did. It’s like a raw memory in comparison, this newest nightmare- it chases him out of bed and down to the Uchiha training ground, through his punishing morning regime and his sullen, half-cooked breakfast. He’d never been willing to admit to caring about Sakura, and he’d never gotten close to her like Naruto had seemed to wriggle into his life, but she’s still gone and it’s still his fault. Because Sasuke had failed to defeat Itachi like he’d sworn, because Sakura was on his team and Sasuke had faltered in his goal, all because of him. Tortured, dead- who knows what his big brother was doing, if Sakura was even still alive or if she’d already died like Kakashi had warned. 

Sasuke hopes she has. Sakura wasn’t a very good shinobi, but she’d been nice, and Sasuke thinks one person is more than enough for Itachi to haunt for the next few years.

Regardless of what he believes, the nightmares don’t stop. He’s beginning to believe Sakura’s ghost is taking revenge, and he can’t blame her for it. 

\--

Naruto is sick. Physically, he vomits, as soon as the realization strikes that Sakura is gone forever and there’s nothing he can do to change it. His mouth tastes putrid and his stomach muscles are quivering like they do after a good laugh, and that’s just wrong because he’s never felt this bad before. 

Iruku finds him and offers to take him to Ichiruka, get the taste out of his mouth and his thoughts on stomach instead, and for a moment all Naruto can think about is his daydreamed dates with Sakura. He’d always take her out for ramen, and he’d win her over with the flavor and flair, and when they got married years later Ichiruka would cater as a matter of sentimentality, and now none of that’s going to happen because Sakura is dead and he let her.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, Naruto knows he could’ve saved her if he’d just moved faster, tried harder, ignored Kakashi-sensei, listened to the demon in his belly for once that was promising retribution if he just  _ let it out!  _ Even Itachi couldn’t defeat the ninetails, surely? Naruto had promised to keep Sakura safe, but when it came down to it, he’d failed her.

Now she was dead, and his whole body aches, and the idea of even trying to eat ramen is enough to make him sick on his empty stomach, spitting out nothing but mucus and water into the streets as Iruka watches and tries to comfort him.

Naruto shakes off his hands, turns away from the compassion on his face. Sakura didn’t get any comfort in the end. Why should he? 

\--

She’s to be a gift for Orochimaru.

The night before she’s to be handed over, Itachi makes another of his disappearances. This shakes her into the present, as cognizant as she can be, and Kisame must spot it. He takes her hand and has her bite it, has her mark a piece of paper with it. The pain is almost laughable when she does, she bites too deep by accident and her teeth taste like rust and she giggles, and it takes Kisame a few tries to regain her focus. 

“They’ll keep you safe.” He tells her, guilt dripping from every decidable. 

The sharks. It takes her moment, but then she sees what she’s signed- a summoning contract with her sleek, fearsome companions. She feels a bubble of joy rise in her gut at the sight. Her world has few joys, but the sharks are keynote among them, and to take them with her wherever she goes is an honor. Still.  “I’m not strong enough to summon them.” She admits, and he cracks a fanged grin with the corners of his eyes becoming suspiciously wet.

“You’ve been feeding Samehada a while now, kid. You’ve got more chakra than you think.”

Sakura has no reservations left and lets her self weep, snotty and pitiful, at his words. Before Itachi comes back, she hugs him. Says thank you. Says he was a good friend. He shakes his head no, but doesn’t argue, and she pretends this is not the last time she will see him. Summons or no, the idea she is meant to survive Oto is impossible to conceive. 

Itachi returns and dresses her in the nicer clothes he saves for days when he wants her to be more like a doll than a servant, rough and inconsiderate as he tugs her into them. She’s sure he knows she can dress herself, so she says nothing, and doesn’t fight the manhandling even as it grows harsh enough to leave bruises. The clothes don’t tear in his efforts, so she focuses on keeping them from the sludge of the dirty earth around them, worried about the consequences if she ruins the fine silk that Itachi has put her in. The land has grown thicker, firmer as they walk, but still with a layer of mud that soaks into her feet and nips at her ankles. Kisame carries her less and she suffers from scratches and pricks at her feet, but the light tickling pain of them is enough to send her half-adrift and it makes the journey a dreamy affair that she can barely recall when she tries. 

They make it silently through the rundown village, with an anticlimactic entrance to the center of it all earned with a simple glance from the guards at Itachi’s eyes. They’re welcomed, flattered, and Sakura is more present than she has been in days from the shock at how new everything is. They’re led through pathways and tunnels and crevices, Itachi growing more and more annoyed, before they finally reach the heart of the maze and the man waiting inside it.  

It’s obvious, from the disdain in the Sannin’s eyes, that she is not up to his standard. This is not the gift he was hoping for, and as soon as Itachi leaves- with a slower paced Kisame following behind- he turns to Kabuto and says, “She’s yours.”

The world moves dizzyingly quick for her, all of a sudden. She’s strapped to a table, and Kabuto’s indifference turns to fascination when she fails to struggle. He draws his equipment out, glinting razor sharp in the light, and she smiles. He tilts his head, obviously asking her to explain, and she whispers, “Sharp equipment. Not dull.” It’s clean, too, and it feels almost like a luxury. She’d been a bit of a germaphobe as a child, turned into a genin with a penchant for well-kept tools, and Itachi’s nightmares had recognized these things and turned them on her. Kabuto is a medic after her own heart, in comparison. 

“Ah.” He says, and he smiles back. Perhaps she will be more interesting than she seemed. She’s not worth the energy of an experimental curse seal, and so he first inspects her for any abnormalities. She grows used to the sensation of fingers in her innards as he asks, calm, cool questions about her genetic history. He’s investigating, not keen on torturing, and it’s a horrible sensation but it’s one she must live with because when she tries to drift, he brings her back with new types of pain, things she must struggle against avidly if she wants to survive. So she breaths, and stays in her body, and tries to answer as perfectly as she can. 

“Pink hair. How fascinating.” He would say, and then, “Your mother or your father’s side?” 

Sakura would take in shaky breath after shaky breath, the tip of a chakra scalpel somewhere in her stomach lining, and respond, “Neither.” It was worse when she didn’t answer. He knew how to make it far, far worse. 

“Genetic abnormality, hm. Perhaps recessive? I must take note.” He mutters, attention return to examining her internal organs. By the second day, his focus has shifted to considering the layers of her muscles, the insides of her bones. 

On the third day, he begins experimenting. “The Senju seems a good fit.” He teases. She’d mentioned her childhood garden once, when his questions had prompted it. Like Itachi’s nightmares, Kabuto had a way of clinging to her small reserves of hope and twisting them into new forms of torture. He taps a finger to his chin, considering, before drawing two slices along the side of her neck and and rubbing in something, Sakura cannot see what, before eventually injecting her with...something. 

It hurts. It hurts for a very long time, and she fades in and out of consciousness as it does, even trying as hard as she is to not drift. It hurts when she is awake and when she is asleep, but she survives, and on the twelfth day- she thinks, she cannot say for certain- it stops. 

“Lovely, lovely.” Kabuto says. “You’ll be a good test subject for the increased dosage, better than I expected… your autopsy will be so informative.” 

She doesn’t have it in her to react. She doesn’t have to- a man appears at the door, and he says, 

“Orochimaru-Sama wants the girl.” 

Kabuto shoots him a disgruntled look. “Really, don’t be ridiculous. He gave me her over a week ago, it’s a wonder she’s still alive as it is.”

The man is sweating nervously, but tries to act casual, and shrugs shaking shoulders. “It’s what he says.”

Kabuto sighs in annoyance and unclips her from the table. She slides from the table despite herself, collapsing into his grasp until he motions the man over to swing her over his own shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

“Well, come on then.” Kabuto says, an order with little pretence to it, and leads the pair to the main room. She struggles to keep herself in her body with the fear thrumming through it, barely managing it only because the walk is so short. 

Orochimaru seems delighted to see her. It’s a far cry from her previous reception. He motions for the guard to bring her closer, and when she is placed carefully next to his chair, he reaches a hand down to play at the tufts of hair remaining on her head. Kabuto must have shaved parts of it, at some point, though she can’t recall it happening. 

“It’s pink.” He says, excited. “Green eyes, yes?”

She looks up at him despite herself, and his disgusting smile grows wider, his tongue snaking out to taste the air. But he doesn’t have sharingan- at least, not yet- and so she can’t find the sight as frightening as he probably intends it to be. His hands are not Kabutos, his eyes are not Itachi’s, and he’s held no fond place in her memories for either of her owners to turn into a punishment. This man means very little to her in the physical- it’s only his power over Kabuto that keeps her present and on edge. 

“How fortunate!” He whispers. He turns his attention to Kabuto. “Did you know, our dear Sasuke once had a teammate that fit this description?”

“Ah.” Kabuto says, realization dawning on his face. “Would you like me to get him?” He asks. 

Sakura whimpers at the idea, mind filled with memories of bloody hands and stolen parts, but Orochimaru shakes his head. “She can be a little secret, until we need some leverage. Or perhaps for when he needs to unlock his Mangekyou…” 

Sakura doubts she’d be useful for any such thing, but she’s happy to take whatever obligations are required if it means she can leave Kabuto’s lab. It’s like when Itachi steps into her head and locks her there, except it doesn’t stop- and Kabuto rarely allows her to drift away from the pain, demanding her focus and experimenting with her pain limit as if it was a fascinating oddity to observe.

“What will we do with her in the meantime?”

“Give her to Kimimaro. Itachi said she’s used to providing care, and he’s been growing restless.”

Sakura finally, finally lets go of her tenuous hold to her body with a sigh. She’s unlikely to get a chance to rest like this again for a very long time, if things continue they way they have been.

Her body is lifted with little care by the same man who brought her in. She’s taken away, deeper into the earth and further from the light, until she’s dropped unceremoniously into the lap of a frail boy.

“She’s yours.” The man informs, glad to be rid of the brief reminder of the conscious he’s long given up. He’s promised himself to not care, that she’s likely older than she looks, but still- there are rumors about this boy. About what happened to his clan. He’s feeding her to a monster amongst monsters, if those rumors are true. 

The boy looks at him with empty eyes, and waits for some clarification. 

“She’s from Orochimaru-sama. Keep her alive.” The guard adds, the only other details he knows to pass on, but it must be enough because the boy lights up at the words, brings gentle hands to the girl’s face and traces the odd, blissful smile stitched across it. 

“A gift.” the boy mumbles, and as the man leaves, he sees the boy begin to arrange the girl into a more comfortable position along his legs, even as his muscles shake from the effort and his frame bends at the motion. 

Perhaps she’s safe. Or maybe the boy takes after his master in more ways than one. The guard leaves, desperate to never find the answer to that question.

Sakura sleeps on, and dreams of dark skies and empty earths and gentle waves along an endless shore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hung high and dry where no one can see  
> If there’s no one to blame, blame it on me  
> Storm in the sky, fire in the street  
> If there’s nothing but pain, put it on me
> 
> I know that you'll never feel like I do  
> I will break into pieces right in front of you  
> I will burn down the city and string up the noose  
> And you’ll watch in wonder"  
> \- Put It On Me, Matt Maeson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0SC3NjsOiY


	6. I'm glad I made a friend that doesn't pray for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> blood is thicker than water, but bones are thicker than both.

Sakura wakes up to fingers drifting along her spine. She thinks, for a moment, it’s Itachi- and as she forces herself to hold still for him, she remembers she’s been passed off to Kabuto. But she’s not chained up, or in pain, or being asked questions- and this is what prompts her to remember that she’s now in the care of a new person entirely. So she cautiously opens her eyes, and finds she’s being stared at. 

The boy is older than her by a few years, but not many. His hair is white, his skin eerily pale, and his forehead is marked with two bright red dots. He seems to be an almost photo-negative version of Itachi, and she watches as his inspection of her continues. Like Kabuto, he seems to be checking her for scars, scraps, deficiencies, and she can only hope she’ll pass his test. 

“Knot.” He mumbles, pressing a finger against a bump on her back, before his search presses onwards. “Back bones need more support... spine has some cracks to fix…” She shivers at the drifting pad of his thumb pulls up along her spine’s line. He doesn’t seem to notice, too focused on one of her injuries he’s spotted, a grimace appearing. “Terrible.” He mutters, tracing at the puckered scar left by one of Itachi’s fits. “Terrible.” He says again, and Sakura cannot help but lift her head to look at him directly. She’s already disappointing him, and she’s desperate to fix her deficiencies and earn more of his gentle approach. 

 

His face bursts into an achingly familiar sort of joy. “Oh! You’re awake!” 

She nods cautiously. No point in lying. 

“I’m going to take very good care of you.” He tells her, hands on her shoulders, on her neck, tipping her head to the side to check where Kabuto injected her with That Thing that Burned. “Kabuto.” He says, and the name comes out like a curse. “He’s never nice with his gifts.” He informs her, finally releasing his hold only to bring her close under his arm. She feels fragile, so unused to such soft contact, and sinks into his chest with little fight. She can feel him, patting at her matted head like she’s a dog, and she sighs in relief. He’s so  _ nice,  _ right now, like on days when Itachi thought she was Sasuke and sick and worth taking care of. Despite herself, she’s enjoying it as long as it lasts, until his inevitable change of heart. 

“I’ve never gotten a gift before. I was Kabuto’s charge, you know, but then I got sick and weak and left behind, and Orochimaru-sama doesn’t give you gifts if you aren’t good. I’ll take much better care of you. I’ll prove I’m good, and then we’ll both get to see outside and help Sama with his cause and the world will be better. We’re going to make the world better, little gift.” He tells her, and she doesn’t see the point in arguing. 

Her name is Sakura, but she doesn’t mind not hearing it for a while. She’s happy to be a gift, not a burden, and the name Sakura dredges up a past she’s been whittling away at for so long that there’s little left fear and sorrow and people she can’t trust anymore.

She falls back asleep, and when she wakes up, the boy feeds her.

He says his name is Kimimaro, but he says she can call him whatever she wants. He spoons her a thick broth, bones floating in it just like Kisami-kun’s old family recipes, and it tastes good. She wants to eat it fast but it hurts her stomach, so she follows Kimimaro’s slow pace and finishes the bowl in little over two hours. 

She tries to call him Kimi-san, something between a nickname and a reverence that she thinks should make him happy- and he has to be happy, has to be, or maybe she’ll go back to Kabuto and cages and sharp knives or Itachi and empty rooms and pain or worse, worse, back to Konoha, greedy hands and angry children and a sense of endless failure as they kill her, kill her, kill her. So he has to be happy. 

Two weeks in, when she’s begun to accept the new routine, she slips up and calls him Kimi-nii. 

Sometimes she forgets that Itachi is not her big brother, or that she doesn’t have a big brother, or that she doesn’t always have a big brother but when she does it’s important he’s happy, and she slips up and calls him her Nii-san and his heart rate spikes all beautiful from where her head is pressed into his chest (concave, sickly, it curves wrong and folds around her and she knows he isn’t strong but he’s kind and big and comforting). 

She calls him Kimi-nii after that because it makes him happy- but she thinks it makes her happy, too. Kimi-nii isn’t strong, she doesn’t think, but he’s nice and comforting and likes having her around and that’s good. 

She lets him meet the sharks, then. He was so scared, at first- not of the sharks, silly boy, silly brother of hers, but because she cuts her hand to bring her friends and he worries about how much blood it takes to get them. He wraps her hand up in his spare clothes and stains the pretty white fabric red, ruins the family crest he’d had on it with her sticky awful blood, but he doesn’t mind because Kimi-nii is kind. Sakura has missed the sharks, and she likes to think they missed her. They nudge at her sides and bump at her head, little kisses of contact from their rough skin on her bruises, and she feels at their gills and thinks maybe her scar from Kabuto’s Thing That Burns isn’t so bad because it sort of looks the same. 

Kimi-nii says the sharks are fine, but that she shouldn’t summon them too often because of how much blood it takes and how little blood she has to give. She sleeps for three days, after the sharks leave, so tired from the chakra exhaustion and blood loss, but she smiles in her sleep and Kimi-nii can’t complain.

He stops calling her little gift and starts calling her little sister, after the last of his robes is ruined at the end of her three day sleep because she eats too quickly and throws up on him. He has to wear the same thin clothes she does, meant for test subjects or corpses with a need for decency, and he calls her little sister and doesn’t seem to mind how much these new clothes make him shiver. 

They talk about his friend Juugo, sometimes, but she’s not allowed to meet him yet. Kimi-nii is very sick, and he wants to make sure she’ll be safe when they go to see Juugo, so they have to wait until Kimi-nii feels strong and Juugo is having a good day and then they’ll go see him. Sakura doesn’t mind much, either way, but she’s not sure Kimi-nii will ever feel strong again. He certainly doesn’t look it. 

They sleep in the same bed because the floor is too cold and harsh for Kimi-nii’s bones, but he refuses to let Sakura sleep on the ground. It’s less a bed and more a gurney, but his shakey breaths and sharp angles help remind Sakura where she is, when she is, and she dreams more than she has in months because of it. She can feel Kimi-nii wake up sometimes, and check her for injuries in the dark. She thinks he has nightmares about her and his old clan, when he does that. She never mentions it in the morning. 

They talk a lot, as time goes on. She doesn’t know why Kimi-nii loves Orochimaru-Sama so much, but she knows she loved Kisame-san and he didn’t let her go either, so maybe it’s something like that. They both dislike the sharingan. Kimi-nii won’t say way, but neither will Sakura, so she thinks it’s probably fair. 

Kabuto sometimes takes her still. Kimi-nii can’t protest, but he never looks happy about it when Kabuto comes for her. Kabuto can’t kill her- he’s very careful not to, actually- but he still wants to see how her body is adapting, so he does his inspections but doesn’t ask many questions, and the pain inflicted is only what’s essential. It still hurts, lots and lots and lots, but nothing like before Kimi-nii was given her. 

He likes to look at her scars on her neck, where she feels it like gills but she knows it must look much worse, because Kabuto will mumble out his notes on it with words like  _ discoloration  _ and  _ unusual presentation _ . 

She grows to like these visits, though, because eventually, when he is done taking her apart for scientific inquiry, he brings out plants. Little seeds in packets that she holds in her hands, and he tells her to think very hard about  _ life and birth and growth,  _ and then later he brings her odd stinky plants native to Oto with dark color schemes and a great deal of thirst, and he tells her to think very hard about  _ move change grow!  _ And then finally, he brings her little flowers like the ones from Konoha, pretty blue things that barely survived the trip over and she’s supposed to think about  _ heal fix grow grow growgrowgrowgrow!  _

She tries very hard, but nothing ever happens, and Kabuto grows angrier and angrier as time goes on. Sakura doesn’t mind. She missed getting to see plants. She soon misses it again, because Kabuto stops taking her from the rack and instead keeps her up and keeps digging. (It’s okay, because she tells Kimi-nii all about the blue flowers and the stinky plants and hopefully little seeds, and his eyes are wide and his lips twist into a unintended smile, because she knows he misses plants too and it’s been so much longer for him than for her.) 

Sakura spends the time with Kabuto not drifting, like Kabuto seems to assume, but paying very close attention to the flicker of chakra running along her. Kabuto is bad, but he’s very clever, too, and she wants to know exactly how he brings the soft, menacing green light to his hands, that does such awful things to her insides. It takes a while, a very long while, but eventually she begins to understand it. She can see the way his chakra moves, the paths it must take and the coils it unlocks, and she brings the flickering light to her own fingertips when the realization hits.

Kabuto notices, and smiles at her, all teeth and no soul. “Clever.” He tells her, but he sounds mad. “Clever little bitch, hm?”

She’s long since dropped the light, but it won’t undo what he saw. “Fix yourself, then.” He tells her, and he leaves her on that table with her insides on the out for so long she begins to fear she’s stuck back inside one of Itachi’s nightmares.

That’s when she remembers Kimi-nii’s family gift. (He uses it too much, too often, for his fragile system to bear, but it’s part of who is and it’s his only gift to give and so he pierces his own skin and makes the things they need from his very own bone. Sakura knows Kimi-nii loves her, and that no one else has ever loved her before, because everyone else takes but he gives what he should not give and it  _ hurts _ .) 

His bloodline can’t be given away, but his bones can. When Kabuto gives her back to him, still struggling to breath and stuck flat on a table, he looks angry like he’s never been before. But she makes him wait, until Kabuto leaves, and she makes him use his gift.

She takes his hands and presses them along her ribs, coaxes him to case them with his own. It’s slow, and painful, and all she wants is for it to  _ stop stop stop _ , but when it’s done she can already tell how much stronger her bones are than before.

It takes even longer for her to seal herself back up, but Kabuto is clever. He would not risk her dying if he did not think she could fix herself, and the damage was to muscle lines and skin, not organs or nerves.

Kabuto doesn’t visit her again, after that. Didn’t like that she stole his trick, maybe, but more likely didn’t like that his injection hadn’t worked.

Sakura does not mind, and Kimi-nii is happy, even if he worries so much about if she got sealed up right. She doesn’t use the Green Light again, because Kabuto uses it and he’s bad, and she doesn’t want to be like him, but she thinks she did an okay job at fixing what he’d left. The scars are strong against her flesh, but she has other scars and no one to impress. 

Kimi-nii is getting sicker. His body is growing weaker, and he spends more time in bed than he used to. She brushes his pretty hair (and focuses on how white it is, how course and rough, not like Itachi’s silky raven black, and she doesn’t drift) and braids it out of his way, and now she’s the one to feed him instead of the other way around. They talk for hours. He tells her about his training, about Juugo and Kabuto and growing up before Sama and after. She tells him about plants and sharks and deserts, about men with red eyes and boys with cold hands. She tells him about her childhood, the things she thinks happened and some she thinks didn’t. She tells him about little kids with nasty words, about how she used to hate her forehead, how a friend-not-friend called her billboard brow. 

Kimi-nii asks her if she’d want to be a Kaguya like him. 

“It was bad, before, but now it’s just me, and if it’s us, it’d be good. We could make it good.”

She does not think it would be an ‘us’ for long, and she doubts she could make anything good on her own, but he looks at her like this is something she can give him back and she can’t say no to that. 

“Of course, big brother.” She says. “Of course.” 

It takes days to give her the marks. Kimi-nii was born with his red dots, but they have to make Sakura’s. They do it prick by prick, using a sharpened bone of Kimi-nii’s and a red ink Juugo manages to sneak him. They both cry when it’s done, happy tears thick with salty water they shouldn’t be wasting, but it’s beautiful. 

Kimi-nii has a little sister. Sakura has a big brother. They’re a family, in this dark little corner of the earth, and now the world can see it just by looking. 

Kimi-nii is getting sicker, but Sakura is too. She tries to hide it, but eventually, she can’t. 

She can smell the swamp water now, even deep underground like they are, and it makes her thirsty. She had given up on a sense of time long before Oto, but now she tastes the ghost of dew in the morning, humidity at night, and neither is enough. Her skin is dry, lips cracking, and her throat too sore to talk. Her eyes are itchy and tired, and she struggles to keep them open when Kimi-nii talks to her.  Kimi-nii grows desperate, when he sees her slip back Out of her body like she hasn’t in so long, and he calls for Kabuto. Kabuto mutters about infections and idiots when he sees Sakura’s clan markings, but he doesn’t say anything else and he takes her back to his lab without a word to her brother. 

Kabuto takes her, and Kimi-nii does not see her for a long time after that. 

 

\---

Sasuke starred. 

On the table, splayed flat, was a bloody pile of limbs that one could only half-heartedly call human. This was not why he starred. Unfortunate as it was, he’d grown used to pretending sights like these did not bother him. Oto was filled with these things, and so long as he did not acknowledge they were human- so long as he does not hear when they beg him to kill them, free them, anything please- so long as they remained nothing more than things, he would be fine. It was a necessary sacrifice, for the path he was on, the people he followed and learned from. Knowledge had to come from somewhere, and experience told him it often came from pain. 

He couldn’t tear his eyes away because he saw pink tufts of hair on the head of the body. Ratty with blood and fingernails torn out clutching at the strands that remained, but there it was, familiar in it’s shade all the same. 

He’s seeing her again. The nightmares had stopped before he left Konoha, replaced by her ghost, trailing after him, accusing him of falling behind, of not trying hard enough, of hurting her all over again. Orochimaru had promised to make that stop, if Sasuke just let the curse mark free, and it had worked- until now. It had curled up his shoulder and down his arm and around his chest and Sakura’s ghost couldn’t come near, his head so filled with Orochimaru’s whisperings. 

Until now. Sakura. Sakura’s face on the nameless thing, and it looks like she’s crying, judging him, always judging him,  _ awful awful awful boy with the awful eyes you did this, you did this, you’re just like your brother! _

He runs, and he does not look back. 

Sakura does not wake up at the sound of his desperate breathing or frantic pace to escape. She’s very, very sick, and Kabuto still hasn’t figured out why. He hates a challenge, and she’s been proving very challenging. Sasuke does not go back to Kabuto’s lab for days, until it would be a noticeable sign of weakness, and when he does, the table is empty and the blood has been cleaned off until the metal shines like new. Kabuto does not know what’s wrong, still, and it’s gone on so long he had to tell Orochimaru.

Orochimaru decides it doesn’t matter. He’s been growing impatient, and Naruto has proven far craftier than he ever expected of the rotten foolish boy. It’s time for Sakura to serve her true purpose here in Oto. She doesn’t need to be healthy to do it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You're sure as hell not Jesus, but you're saving me-  
> Thank you very much for putting faith in me,  
> Reminding me a light was once so great to be,  
> I'm glad I made a friend that doesn't pray for me."  
> \- sure as hell not jesus, cosmo jarvis, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=28&v=YPu2xwPekYM


	7. A genius of love and loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Run.

Kabuto takes her head in his hands as they glow a sickly green. His lip curls back to waste his abilities like this- Orochimaru so underestimates his worth, his uses- but the order is a logical one. Sakura’s hair inches out from her scalp, growing longer and longer until it reaches her lower back. He stares distastefully at her Kaguya marks, hides them with a red ribbon that matches her new dress. It’s a bright red, unstained, with white ribbon trim and a glaring circle in the center. It looks very similar to a dress that was long since shredded, burnt and thrown out with other remnants of the unwilling companion Itachi had kept for so long. If Sakura was awake, she would weep for the girl she impersonates so poorly. Instead, she withers away, twitching and shifting but still lost in fitful sleep. 

She doesn’t wake up until she’s brought up, up out from the lab and the labyrinth of rooms nestled in Oto’s deep earth, up to the sky and to walls built from clay, not carved from dirt. She breathes in, moist air and heavy skies that promise rain, and her eyes flicker open. 

Sakura is placed in the mud, and she does not move until she is jostled into a seated position. The mud is in her hair, now, on her new-old-new clothes, and Kabuto grumbles and dumps a pot of water over her to clean her off, and she startles at the water but in a wonderful way, feels the slick rush of it across her and the pebbles of drops that stick to her skin. Lovely, lovey, she laps at her own skin like a cat getting clean until she tastes mud and gives up. 

Kimi-nii is there.  She notices him first, but she doesn’t move towards him- she never moves first, instinct long bred out- and it’s lucky she does because the pause is long enough to let her notice the rest of them. Kabuto, standing beneath a frame and leaning against a wall, sheltered from the future rain and looking disgruntled at the idea of it. Then there’s Orochimaru, with Kimi-nii next to him, seated on a pillow and treating it like a throne, and Sakura can’t help but notice Kimi-nii is stuck sitting in the mud. 

She wants to be happy for her brother, because she knows he loves nothing more than getting to be with his Sama, but all she can think is that she wants to tear that pillow out from under that man and give it to her brother. Can’t the monster see that he’s sick, that he’s dying, that Kimi-nii is sore and tired and the ground can’t be good for him, and besides, Kimi-nii is pretty and noble and shouldn’t get  _ messy.  _ All his clothes got ruined with her sick and her blood and now he’s in patient cloth and slowly soaking in mud, and she hates it because he deserves better. At the very least, he deserves that damn pillow. 

She sits, and she breathes, and she tastes at the air and the condensation approaching, and waits for whatever is next. Probably a new owner, but maybe just her death. Maybe another test, with seeds or flowers and futile thoughts of  _ growthgrowthgrowth _ .

Then, then.

Sasuke is as loud as she remembers. Dragged out by an annoyed woman with red hair and a man with black eyes, and he argues as he follows their unsteady pace. He’s meant to be training inside today, apparently, and does not enjoy the interruption. He’s taller, older, ragged face and larger muscles, his chin more pronounced and his eyes less feminine. He still looks like Sasuke, the boy who wants her dead, the boy who wants her eyes or her ribs or maybe just to kill her- and worse, he looks like Itachi.  He looks like Sakura, when she didn’t have a mirror and Itachi got talkative and she was forced into silks and back when brothers were bad, awful, scary creatures who never called her a gift, and she had to pretend she was a little boy with black eyes and greedy for brotherly affections. She hates to look at him, but she’s too tired to look away. 

When he sees her, he stops, suddenly, mouth snapping shut and feet slamming down. The mud sloshes a bit, splattering his toes and his shoes and the hem of his pretty purple outfit. Sakura hopes Itachi won’t blame her for that. The fabric looks expensive. 

“What-” he begins to say, and Orochimaru hisses out a greeting. Pleased, he sounds, and Sakura hates him too. 

“Isn’t she adorable?” Orochimaru asks, leaning forward in his seat. “Such pretty hair. I’m sure that’s why Itachi kept her, don’t you? Those long missions can get so… lonely, after all.”

There is silence, and then so much noise it hurts her. Sasuke yells, something indescribable and furious and harsh, but he remains in place, shaking with adrenaline and fear and anger and the need to run when he can’t. 

“Yes, brother dearest was never one to play nice with his toys. Which is why, dear boy, you’d be doing her a favor if you just-”

Orochimaru stops talking rather suddenly. The noise that comes out of his mouth instead is a squelch, more than anything, and Sakura twists her head to look behind her and see why. Orochimaru had never seemed the type to struggle for words, much less make such an undignified sound. 

Orochimaru is impaled on white, pristine bone. 

It juts through his throat, through the back of his head, through his stomach and a shoulder and part of his thigh. 

His blood is so dark it’s more black than red, and it soaks in with the mud as the sky cracks open and pours out endless pounding raindrops onto his corpse. 

Kimi-nii looks sad. His body is hunched worse than usual, his arms in the mud and coating his face, and his eyes are wide and empty. The rain drips down the bone and mixes with the black blood and trickles down from Orochimaru’s corpse to stain her brother’s bones, his clothes, the back of his skin, all of it. 

Sakura crawls towards him, muscles aching and breath harsh, but she makes it to him and she curls into her place. Pressed into his chest, tucked under his chin, safe and protected and there for him, and when he collapses on top of her in exhaustion she holds him and they lay there, in the rain and the mud, small and weak and distant to the world.

She remembers a night, when they didn’t know how sick they were and they slept in the same bed and it was dark, hot, isolated. Not even Juugo was nearby, because Kabuto was using him for something. It was night because they decided it was, and it was time to sleep because they were supposed to, but both had struggled for hours before she whispered, 

“I love you, big brother.”

She thought he was asleep by then. Didn’t want to jinx it, jinx him, but she wanted to say the words before everything became Bad again, like when Kisami taught her things but then Itachi got mad, or when Kabuto was in a good mood and let her driftdriftdrift until he brought her crashing back. Kimi-nii would grow to hate her, or he’d die, or she’d die, but she has to tell him that what he’s done for her was good. The kindest thing she’d ever had. He gave her his own bones and then his own name, his bed and his clothes and his time, and she loved him so much it hurt worse than anything else has ever hurt her because she can’t do anything half as good back for him. His breathing had stuttered, and she’d known than that he was awake, but he didn’t say anything and neither did she and they both fell asleep soon after. 

He never said he loved her, not like he said he loved his Sama, but now as she sits under his frail form and feels the rain for the first time in years, she feels nothing but loved and free and happy. The water soaks into her skin and she feels better, better than she has in days, weeks, maybe years if the way Sasuke looks says anything about how long she’s been taken. 

Then she hears Sasuke scream again, and she sees him finally, he’s kneeling and shrieking at the skies and then he’s staring at her, at  _ her,  _ and Suddenly Kimi-nii is clutching her in his arms and they are  _ moving  _ and then 

they

are 

_  Gone.  _

Kimi-nii is flagging as soon as he starts but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t stop, and she never knew how strong her big brother was until now because even as weak as he is, Kimi-nii is moving so quickly it makes her dizzy and the landscape blur and when he stops, the boy that was chasing them is long lost and Kimi-nii is safe to collapse to the sand- sand?- beneath him, eyes fluttering shut and hand drifting off of Sakura’s head as the muscles finally relax. 

Well. Well. Kimi-nii has gotten them this far. Sakura will have to finish the job. She scoops him up and takes a deep breath, and follows the scent of saltwater, eyes closed and legs trembling but confident with every step that she’s making the right decision. 

\--

Sasuke runs. 

He’s half the hunter and half hunted. With Orochimaru dead, he’s lost his place in Oto, but Kabuto is alive and newly made emperor and Sasuke would make for a very good experiment. This isn’t what makes him run in the moment, only what compels him forward after he’s returned to his senses. He gives chase because it’s Sakura getting snatched again, dressed like she used to and hair like she used to and it’s as if Orochimaru had torn the girl out of his memories and shoved her into his present and maybe, maybe he could’ve killed her, in that moment. To defeat his brother, he could do a lot of things.

But then Kimimaro had taken her, and the boy might’ve been gentle about it- wrapped himself around her like a cacoon and held her like she’d break- but everything screamed of a wretched moment to Sasuke, of Itachi and Sakura and a Sasuke who didn’t chase and cost Sakura her life.

So he chases. He’s used to trailing after ghosts, and this feels more familiar because of it than anything else has in years.

Karin and Suigetsu fall in behind him, and something tells him they’re not going to force him back or turn away themselves. A new team. He’ll think about it when he doesn’t have a fragment of his past and a man-turned-monster to find. 

They lose him, somehow. Stuck in the swamps outside Oto, coming back to reality. 

“Her chakra...was weird.” Is what Karin says. “I can find it again, if you want, Sasuke-kun.”

He’d seen her neck. Despite how she’d looked, Kabuto had obviously been using her as a test subject- to call her chakra ‘weird’ would be an understatement, he’s willing to bet. 

“....No. Find my brother.”

Sakura can wait. Itachi has roamed free long enough, and Sasuke is sick of waiting. 

\--

They’re resting, but Kimi-nii… Kimi-nii is not well.

Sakura has found them a beautiful river. It’s filled with fresh fish that she catches and cooks and feeds him, graced with visits by deer and birds and all sorts of odd creatures that Sakura loves to watch. It leads, eventually, to the ocean- she can smell it. She thinks they’ll be safest there, where the waves meet the shore and her summons flock in strength. But while this river seems to be working wonders for her, Kimi-nii only grows weaker. 

“I’m dying, little sister.” He tells her, voice soft and empty of struggle. “You have to leave me behind.” 

Sakura’s palm splashes the water, and she lets out a bitter shriek. 

“I won’t!” She tells him. “I won’t ever!”

“I’m slowing you down.” 

It’s true. They’ve stayed along this river for a while, left a more obvious trail than even a genin would be willing to do, all in an effort to keep from pushing Kimi-nii too hard. She refuses to accept the argument. 

“It doesn’t matter, Kimi-nii. I’ll get stronger.” She promises. “I’ll get so strong it won’t matter if we never move again.”

He smiles at her. It hurts to look at. He’s shivering, and she wants to get him a blanket, but that would mean finding a town and risking entering it and leaving Kimi-nii unguarded all the while. She makes for a terrible little sister. 

“Alright, little sister.” He says, but it’s placating to its core in tone. He’s dying, and she cannot stop it.

Sakura has always been clever, and she always tries to keep her promises. So she throws herself into getting stronger, into being better, so she can keep her big brother safe. She tries to remember everything she’s ever seen.

She doesn’t have red eyes- she checks, in the water, and with some relief finds them green and plain instead- so she can’t use the genjutsu tricks like Itachi-nii. She hasn’t got teeth like Kisami, so she starts to file them with one of Kimi-nii’s kunais when she has the time. It hurts, but she uses just a little of the Green Light to make them feel better, grow a little taller, so she thinks it’s okay. She only knows a few jutsus from Kisame, but she practices them anyways. This time around, she’s surprised to discover they’re much easier than they used to be. She thinks about that, for a while, and then remembers what Kabuto said.

Now that she’s in the sunlight, by the water, able to eat when she wants and taste the fresh air, it’s easier for her to piece together the world around her, and the world she’s left behind. She knows what Kabuto did- the Thing That Burned- involved the Senju, and that he expected her to potentially be able to use the Mokuton. That was why he gave her the little seed packets. 

Hashirama was the most powerful Senju, the most famous, but Sakura knows he’s not the only one. The first to come to mind is Tsunade, and that name sends a bell ringing in her chest, deep like a gong,as she remembers the woman is known for being a master at healing. A princess who can bring back the dead. In that moment, Sakura decides she must bring Kimi-nii to Tsunade.

The second to come to mind, when she files that realization away for further planning that night, is Tobirama. 

Tobirama wasn’t very nice. His impact was questionable, and often overlooked. But he was still strong, still effective, and still a Senju. Tobirama didn’t have a way with plants or people, like Hashirama- he’d had a way with water. 

Oh.  _ Oh _ . It all made a lovely kind of sense. 

Sakura wadded into the river, careful to listen to her brother’s breathing in case he started up another racking cough, but it continues soft and easy, so she ducks her head beneath the surface of the water, and she stops trying to think about  _ grow  _ or  _ new  _ and starts thinking about  _ ancient  _ and  _ change. _

Water is always there, she remembers from her lessons as a child. The same water, just cycling, changing from ice to rain to particles in the air. Water and plants are nothing alike, when it comes to understanding them. Plants are brief glimmers of beauty, of life, that only sprout with the right care, but water is unending and eternal and will bend to fit the reality it’s placed in.  

It rests heavy on her shoulders, and she keeps herself from floating up by concentrating on that weight. It hurts, to hold her breath so long, but she waits as long as she can before gasping to the surface, and then sinking right back in to try again. She thinks.

Water is in plants, in animals, in the air and in people. If she gets very, very good at this  _ thing,  _ Sakura will be strong enough to keep Kimi-nii safe forever. She could even keep herself safe, if she tried hard enough. 

When she wades out of the river at last, clothes clinging to her skin and newly-long hair sticky on her back, she’s greeted by a nervous Kimi-nii settled by the fire. 

“Tomorrow, big brother, we’re going to find a princess.” She tells him. Kimi-nii settles into his bed, stares at the sky, and asks her,

“Do you want me to tell you a story?”

He used to do that, when she was the one sick in bed and he could still climb out of it. When Kabuto gave her back and the nights drew on too long, he’d tell her all sorts of stories to pass the time. This seems different, but Sakura nods yes anyways.

“A very long time ago, there was a Princess named Kaguya. She was the princess of the moon, and she grew so lonely that she came down to live with the humans…”

Kimi-nii told her the story of his- their- clan, the legacy she’d signed on to unwittingly, and the lonely curse that came with it. He fell asleep before he could finish, but Sakura didn’t mind. She slept well, that night, to the sound of the lapping river bed and Kimi-nii’s shakey breath. 

Princess Kaguya sounded lonely, and scary, but never weak. If Sakura could be half so strong, she wouldn’t mind the rest of it. She’d long given up on fairytale endings and happy weddings- all she wants is to be a little less lonely, with her brother, forever. If that’s too much to ask, she’ll take it anyways- Sakura has been learning, these past few years, days, whatever it is that amounts to her life post kidnapping, that the world is full of people that take. 

She’s ready to be one of them, if only for her brother. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Guess life is long when soaked in sadness, on borrowed time from Mr Madness,  
> And so it goes, choking a rose back. To be reborn, I want to hold you like you're mine  
> You're gone but you're on my mind, I'm lost but I don't know why."  
> Agnes, Glass Animals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhdtdUljThU
> 
> \--  
> the reader who guessed she was turning into a mermaid? ur not half wrong and im very proud of u.
> 
> tobirama was known for having great chakra control and specializing in water jutsu. now, he was no Mermaid Man, but he also didn't have a soft spot for sharks or a minor familarity with intense body modification, so he's forgiven for not taking that extra step. Sakura....well.
> 
> But 'mermaid' really isn't the end goal for sakura either. let's just say she draws a lot of inspiration not only from her summons, but from the act of summoning. ;)


	8. I had him bless these hands just to run you out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a bargain.

The village is desolate and sickly. It makes sense, in an odd sort of way; where better for a healer to hide then among the unhealthy?

It had taken far too long for her to find the location of the Princess, and Kimi-nii was the worse for it. His skin was turning cold, his body light, and his focus begins to drift too easily. This is what concerns Sakura the most- she’s known her brother as a man with determination, an iron will, and if he’s losing that she worries it’s not long before he drifts away from her completely. She clenches her hands in anger, feels the walls near her crumble slightly from the pressure- the dew along them as pressed down with the force of it, and the old wood is too rotten to completely withstand the weight. _Kimi-nii won’t die._ He can’t die, because he is the moon in the sky and the sun in her heart and the truth in every lie. If he dies, she’ll be alone, and someone else will come to claim her, and Sakura refuses to let that happen.

Tsunade-Sama is in the back of the tavern at the center of the village, passed out drunk from what must’ve been a late night of gambling. Sakura wastes no time approaching her, half-present and half distracted worrying about where she’s let Kimi-nii unguarded to do this. As it is, the woman is pretty but unimpressive- Sakura can spot flecks of the woman’s vomit on her shirt and the table, and a scattering of cards around her body. The slug princess doesn’t look very talented, but Sakura can’t afford to be picky.

“Wake up.” She says, and Tsunade-jerks awake, head rising with her hands in something of a defensive stance. Pitiful, almost, if Sakura hadn’t lost the very concept of pity stretched out on a table with a scalpel in her belly months ago. The woman has already started to ignore her, rambling about leaving as soon as she wins the next hand, that they can’t kick her out yet, and Sakura speaks over her.

“I need you to save my brother.” She says, and Tsunade...Tsunade stills. Looks away from her table, stares Sakura down.

“Kid, I can’t help anybody.” Is what she says, but Sakura won’t take that for an answer. She can’t.

“My brother is dying, and you’re the only one who can save him!”

She draws closer, hands tight at her side and she can hear the shattering of the watered-down bottles of alcohol on the rack behind her shatter. Tsunade doesn’t notice, eyes softening in a way Sakura can’t stand if it doesn’t mean this woman will save Kimi-nii.

“There are other medics, better ones.”

“Not better than you!” she lashes out, shrugging over the hand the woman tries to rest on her side. Desperate, she reaches for the only excuse she’s got before she has to try for violence- a bet sure to fail, new jutsus or not.“I’m Senju, too- you have to help your family.”

Tsunade looks angry, now, shoves away from the table and glaring her down. “Lying’s not a good look, kid.”

“I’m not lying! Kabuto made me Senju, but he couldn’t fix my brother.” Sakura informs her, and she watches as Tsunade’s eyes widen in shock. “I think he made him worse.”

She’s slammed into the wall across the hall a few seconds later, feels the breath wheeze out of her fractured ribs very poorly. Is terrified, for a moment, until she sees the way that the princess tracks the blood dripping from Sakura’s mouth. Scared. Sakura knows what fear looks like, and this is intimately familiar. This is long black hair and a brush and red eyes staring her down.

“You don’t like blood.” Sakura murmurs, even as the slug princess stares her down.

“Tell your fucking boss to fuck off and leave me alone, got it? Try and use my past against me again, and I'll kill you.”

“No.”

“What did you say?” Tsunade says, and it genuinely sounds more surprised then angry. Sakura supposes it’s not often a saanin hears no, much less a pretty rich one.

“I said _No!_ I don’t have a boss, and I won’t leave you alone, because my brother is dying and you’re the only one who can stop it, and if you don’t- I’ll- I’ll-”

“What are you gonna do, kid, against a Sannin?”

She remembers how the princess stared at her blood, and she meets her eyes with all the conviction in her heart. “I’ll fill this whole town up with blood. I can’t beat you, but there are a lot of civilians here. I’ll use my summons. I’ll make myself bleed, too, and it’ll be so bad and gross and awful that you’ll never be able to forget it, and you’ll never wash it off, and-”

“Fuck, kid, I get it.” There’s a shudder, and then Tsunade drops her hand. Sakura sinks to the ground with a gasp of relief, pressure finally gone. “Orochimaru’d never have a plan that simple.”

“Oh, Orochimaru-sama’s dead. My brother killed him for me.”

“...I need to see your brother, I think. And a drink.”

 

Sasuke has trailed behind his brother’s tracks for weeks, now, unwilling to draw closer without a plan, and he still hasn’t found a way to defeat him. He’d thought, at first, he was prepared- but with Orochimaru’s death the seal has grown weaker and weaker, it’s effect fading from his body and leaving him nauseous, sickly.

Then- then, there’s the fact of the ghost. His new teammates are understanding, as far as it can be, but he knows they’re growing nervous with how unstable he is. He can’t help it, when the ghost that’s haunted him for years is back but real, now, and with Orochimaru’s influence fading the False Sakura is chasing him again. She’s at the corners of his vision, flickering between what he remembers and the sight of her in the mud, and sometimes she’s been speared just like Orochimaru was. Sometimes she’s burnt out, with a hole shaped like his fist through her chest. Sometimes, at night, her eyes glow red and flicker with the sharingan and Itachi has _ruined her_.

She hates him, demands so much and so little, and that body on the table was _hers_ and he’d failed her again, twice over in so few days, awful boy awful boy _awful boy._

Still. He’s content to leave it be, used to the pressing hate crawling in his head, to push off finding her until he’s killed Itachi, until he comes to a village and learns of her situation despite himself.

There are rumors, ones that drift past him but catch the ears of his teammates, of a bedraggled girl and the slug princess. Spotted on the edges of civilization, dragging around the body of a god, a prince, a ghost, being chased by a demon, an ex-lover, the girl’s secret father- the facts change, it’s gossip after all, but what they know is that Tsunade is with a girl who has pink hair and they’re running from _something._

Sasuke doesn’t talk about his ghost, but Karin and Suigetsu know anyways. They hear him talking to himself, to the girl that haunts him, and they remember what the girl in the mud looks like from their briefest of encounters. Worse than all of that, they care. Not about her- of course not- but _him._ So it’s not just his own self-hate pushing at him, clawing for his attention, but love, even if it’s a fragmented kind.

“Not that I like the idea of you caring about another girl, Sasuke-kun, but I just don’t think you’ll feel good about ditching her when all of this is done.” Karin coos, drawing in close to him and artfully dodging his disgruntled push. “You’re not ready to fight him yet, anyways-”

She cuts off, stumbling back when his glare turns hateful, and hastily adds, “- So this could be practice! For Itachi! Something that’s got a saanin running, got to be worth a fight, yeah?”

“Hmph.” Sasuke replies, but the idea slips into his head.

It’s Suigetsu who changes his mind, though. He comes back to their camp, drizzling wet from the coastal town’s shore, and he’s as nervous as he’s ever looked. “It’s Kabuto.” He says, and it makes the pair turn to face him. “What?”

“It’s Kabuto. He’s the one chasing down your old teammate.”

“Fuck.” Karin says, because they’ve all been pretending Kabuto is dead or gone or otherwise detained, unwilling to consider that he might come after them at some point. And because Karin is not exactly kind, but she remembers Kabuto, and she wouldn’t wish him on anyone. Especially when she knows better than anyone exactly what he was working on when they ran.

“...We need to go to Konoha.” Sasuke says, ignores his shocked teammates, and tugs his hood up. “ _Now._ ”

They leave without bothering to pack up their camp.

 

Tsunade is terrible.

It’s not her fault, Sakura knows, but the woman is a major risk. She’s highly recognizable, and worse than that, she’s got an addiction that demands they stop in every village they can find that offers a bottle or a chance at slots. It’s dangerous as it gets, and the constant attention is driving Sakura to the edge, but there’s nothing to be done about it, because Tsunade is also _good._

Kimi-nii is getting better. His hands no longer shake when he holds things, and his skin is turning pinker. His focus is back, most of which is riveted on Sakura and her new abilities, and he spends his days worrying over their future. He believes they’ll have a future again, and that’s all it takes for Sakura to forgive Tsunade all her flaws and then some. 

They travel quickly and discreetly to make up for how recognizable they’ve become, sticking to the edges of lands and the safety of the wilderness when they’ve got a stash of alcohol to last the days. Tsunade likes to watch Sakura practice, when she’s drunk, calls her Uncle teasingly when she’s even drunker. When she’s well, she turns her back to Sakura and barely talks at all. That’s okay. Sakura’s used to people with different spirits in their skin, and temperaments to match- at least Tsunade is always helpful, even if she isn’t always kind.

Sakura begins to call out the water from the air around her, the plants and the soil where it soaked in deep. It works well enough when they’re in lands with some humidity, but when they begin to hide in Suna, she grows more desperate, and because of that, clever.

She waits until Tsunade is sober and distracted, working away with Kimi-nii on reflexes and tendons, and digs her teeth deep into her own flesh. There’s probably a less messy way to do this, but she doesn’t want to dirty a blade; besides, the taste of iron is helpful, laps at her tongue and helps her focus, reminds her of the surge of power she feels when she calls on her summons. So she bites deep and feels the blood drip and calls the water in it, uses it to drag at the water around her, and _pushes._

Her blood spills to the sand, and then, quivering at the edges, it turns foggy and spreads out into a small puddle, until she’s got a bucket’s worth of water in front of her.

She passes out a few minutes later, but it’s with a great deal of satisfaction. She wakes to a terrible reprimand from Tsunade and an even angrier one from Kimi-nii, but that’s okay, because she knows how it worked, and she knows how to make it better. Sakura is far too distant from her genin years to remember the terms for it, the classifications, but what she’s done is make something _new._

  
She doesn’t know it, but Sakura has just invented a new jutsu entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had him bless these hands just to run you out/ Give me strength when you run your mouth/I've got a bone to pick/ Somebody showed you all of the horror you weren't born with it" White Dove, Grandsons  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbdN8CGCpKA
> 
> i normally HC this song as an extremely sasuke song (especially some of the other lyrics) but the phrase 'I had him bless these hands just to run you out' is the most Bones!Sakura line imagineable. 
> 
> we're drawing closer to the scene that made me write this fic in the first place, and the song that inspired it, and i'm very excited for it.


	9. daylight in bad dreams, in a cruel world full of cruel things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she doesn't need you anymore. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxg4C365LbQ

They’re more than halfway to Konoha when Karin stumbles. Sasuke catches her, barely, tosses her to Suigetsu to carry because they don’t have time to stop and he’s feeling to paranoid to run without easy access to his swords, until she shrieks, 

“He’s already caught her!”

Suddenly, everything is still. Suigetsu holds Karin with stiff arms, staring down at her with intense shock. Sasuke whirls around to face them both, desperate to be misunderstanding what he’s heard, because if Karin’s right then in all likelihood he’s failed Sakura,  _ again,  _ just like he did as a boy, just like he failed his family, and she might not make it out alive this time to forgive him. 

Karin clutches at the fabric of her cloak, straining with the effort to trace such distant and corrosive chakras. “He’s- he’s so good at hiding it, normally, but there was a burst of it, right by hers, I think they’re fighting, Sasuke-kun, I think- fuck, he’s got to have her by now. There’s no way she could win this.” 

It goes, unspoken, that they likely couldn’t win a fight against Kabuto either. Not without more practice as a unit, more time to prepare and grow beyond the carefully measured skills Kabuto took note of. 

“We need- we  _ need  _ to get to Konoha.” Sasuke finally says, voice cracking. His teammates are uncertain if he plans to kill Naruto to unlock the next phase of sharingan, or if he’s hoping for backup, but either way it’s likely the only option for surviving a run in with Kabuto. They’ll take what they can get, to escape the nightmares of that man and his cold hands and colder eyes. It’s not like they haven’t worked with worse people before. 

They run, Karin back on her feet and with a hand to her head, straining against the migraine of keeping track of so many chakra at once.  _ At least,  _ she thinks with some despondency,  _ the girl is still alive.  _ Her bizarre, malformed chakra has not yet flickered out. That’s more than most of Kabuto’s test subjects can hope for. 

Orochimaru’s spies, before his rather anticlimactic passing, had warned that Naruto had returned to the leaf village as part of orders to set out with a team to try and recapture Sasuke. At the time it’d been a nervewracking time limit for Sasuke, a countdown to a decision he had to make that was more final than anything else before, but now it’s just a relief. He knows where his old team is, and he might hate them for their misplaced trusts, might have left them far behind for good reason, but he also knows they feel as guilty as he does about Sakura. Sasuke knows just how motivating guilt can be, and he’s relying on that now, unsurprised to find Naruto meeting him at the edge of the village with a small troupe of vaguely familiar nin and their former sensei at his back. 

“Sasuke!” Naruto shouts, rasengan already forming and stance shifting to combative before it registers that Sasuke looks frantic, not furious. He moves back uneasily. “Sasuke?”

Sasuke meets his eyes, eyes wide and dark as night. “Sakura’s alive.” is what he says, and Naruto feels the shock charge through his body and knock the wind right out of him, the Rasengan sputtering out like a light. “Sakura’s alive, and she’s  _ out there,  _ and Kabuto has her, and I can’t get her  _ back. _ ”

Naruto’s chakra is burning red, and Karin has to tear her eyes away for fear of going blind. 

“Where?” Naruto asks, and suddenly the focus of both boys- both monsters, as far as Karin can tell, far too powerful to count as human anymore- has turned to focus entirely on her. 

There’s nothing she can do but lead the way, and pray that this pair will be strong enough to kill the man that scares her more than anyone else ever has. 

 

They arrive with little time to spare, Sasuke’s new team and his old one, and Kakashi thinks he might be the only one close enough to being in his right mind to take stock of the space. He’s got experience, not like the rest of them, and he’s able to shove down the guilt and hate and intense goddamn loathing that this is bringing up-  _ she was alive this whole time and you never tried to get her, how long did you leave her with Itachi, how quickly did she accept that you were never coming, you left your comrade behind and she was just a child and-  _ to focus instead on understanding the impossible scenario he’s had shoved onto his lap.

Sasuke has put something before his revenge, for the moment, if only as part of a long-term strategy to get rid of Kabuto. Naruto isn’t rushing in for once, standing with their unusual lineup and thrumming with a nervous energy that barely hides his spiking bursts of killing intent. The girl who led them here, Uzumaki by the looks of it, has shifted back with an appropriate level of caution to indect she’s willing to listen to the Konoha group’s strategy. Next to Uzumaki-san is a Kiri Nin if Kakashi’s ever seen one, and he’s ignoring the Konoha to focus on Sasuke but at least it’s some level of reservation. Kiri aren’t exactly known for that. 

Sakura is standing there, panting and hunched but sturdily upright.  _ Alive.  _ There’s a woman behind her, collapsed in a huddle and missing limbs, blond hair covering her face. In her arms- what’s left of them- is a boy that looks more like a skeleton, frail and unmoving. From this distance, even Kakashi can’t tell if he’s dead or simply passed out. The land is pockmarked, checkered in rubble and holes, with jagged bones strewn about. It looks like a thousand natural disasters had hit all at once, and now Sakura’s standing there in front of it all looking eerily familiar for all her new injuries. Her hair is the same soft pink, her clothes are dark red and filthy but cut and styled like it was when she was a child- and the uncertainty in her stance is achingly, painfully the same. She’s got the formal training of a genin, if that, and it hurts him to look at.  

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto yells excitedly, almost forgetting himself for a moment, forgetting the danger, but she doesn’t seem to hear him. She’s got the eyes of a ghost, and her stance remains inexperienced but the confusion of it fades, twists into something solid and rooted, as Kabuto draws closer.

It’s like they’re all frozen, watching, even as they’d all come to try and- laughably late, save her. It’s too late, and Kakashi can see that now- they came too late. Whoever this is, it’s not Sakura-chan, not the girl he’d given up on long before her time. This battle is one he could not drag her from, kicking and screaming, and they’re all stuck waiting, unsure of how to interfere without risking killing Sakura, no idea what she’s capable of and willing to try to beat Kabuto. 

“Kabuto!” She shouts out, furious. She reaches her arm not towards him, but instead in front of her own face, and bites, harsh and dragging with teeth that Kakashi can see from this distance are filed to a point, tears and rips at her own flesh before they truly sink in deep to muscles beneath. Blood pours down from the wound faster and faster, more and more, and when she finally releases her jaw’s grip her mouth is stained red. “ _ Kabuto!”  _ She shouts again, beyond words, beyond anything but righteous anger. The name is less a name and more a curse, spit out with blood and fury and all the killing intent in the world. 

Her blood is spreading outwards from where it drips to the ground, swirling into a deep, deep lake that covers the field before them in a matter of seconds. It swallows up the earth, the bones, the scattered earth. The edges of it lap at the blonde woman and her charge. Both Sakura and Kabuto are standing on top of the water, isolated in the middle of a suddenly-born lake, and Kabuto springs forward to attack, hands glowing a sickly green, tauntingly calling out, 

“Oh, Sakura-chan, haven’t you learned by now-”

His words are cut off with a scream as he’s caught in the mouth of a shark rising from the depths, a behemoth of a creature. Its gigantic teeth chew through the man in seconds, and it spits out a mangled body that lands in front of Sakura and floats. 

She grins, sharp and vicious, and places a hand on his skull. Her eyes roll back into her head, and then a faint trickle of pink liquid drips from Kabuto’s ears to mingle in the waves. She staggers back, letting out a single triumphant laugh. 

“I learned, Kabuto! I learned!” 

She lets the body sink. 

Finally, finally, she seems to realize where she is, because she sees her old teammates coming towards her (Slowly, because they still haven’t mastered water walking like she apparently has), and she shrieks. 

“No. No! No no no, it has to be real, I did it, I did it this can’t be fake it has to be  _ real I can’t do this again not again not again-”  _

She takes one more frantic glance at the quickly approaching Konoha shinobi and slams her hands together into a quick sign that sends her plunging into the water.

Her injuries are debilitating and the water will only speed up her blood loss- Kakashi dives in after her, and drags her struggling body up to the surface even as she flails against him violently. 

“No more, no more, no more! Let me go let me go,  _ I won’t let you do this again, Itachi!” _

Sasuke shudders across the lake. Kakashi does not falter. 

She only stops fighting when she passes out from exhaustion, halfway to the shore. He drags her body to land and lets the Kiri nin remove traces of water from her lungs, suspicious but unwilling to risk her health over village loyalties. Uzumaki-san goes towards her with green hands, a softer shade than what Kabuto had been wielding, but before Kakashi can decide if he’ll risk it, Sakura wakes up with a shudder and  _ screams. _

It’s less like the screams he remembers from the battlefield, and more like the sound a trapped animal makes when it sees an incoming predator. She only falters when Uzumaki-san slowly, carefully approaches, no chakra coursing in her hand and a soft tilt to her face. Sakura’s eyes flicker wildly, between the girl and her old teammates, and Kakashi’s heart breaks again when she tries to wriggle closer to Uzumaki-san, put some space between herself and Naruto. She keeps staring at Sasuke, his hands and his feet, obviously waiting for any movement, and it’s obvious enough why when he begins to move down and she jerks her head to the side, slams her eyes shut, even as it sets off another coughing fit.  However she came to know Kabuto, she was with Itachi long enough. Her fear of Sasuke is more than enough evidence of that. 

Uzumaki-san takes advantage of the moment, shoving her hand forward to press against Sakura’s forehead, and a bright flash of mint-green light bursts quickly and fades as Sakura sinks down and falls into a twitchy, uneasy sleep. 

 

“So, uh- now what?” Naruto asks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this fic specifically because i was stuck on a plane, listening to this song, and started thinking about a feral sakura fighting for survival with a technique that involved water and her own blood. here, finally, is that chapter. it didn't live up to the imagery like i hoped to, but hopefully it's still good for you. 
> 
> " Hang tight, on you. Nothing like a big bad bridge to go burning through."  
> \- Acid Rain, Lorn   
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxg4C365LbQ


	10. And even though my heart needs to take its time I know that it's mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *kill bill sirens*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "When it went down, it was so hard to breathe, I gave up everything in a slow fall down to the floor.  
> Life was escaping me, I couldn't find myself 'til it was all lost, not anymore.   
>  I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris 'til it's time. I'll pull it together and fix myself eventually-   
>  and I know that it's mine."   
> \- Phoebe Ryan, Mine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T82OEZmCr1o

Sakura wakes and sleeps in fits for a smattering of minutes, before finally giving a deep gasp and leaping to unsteady feet. She’s got a steadier presence, a tight press of her hands to a cut on her gut. She’s staring at Sasuke’s blade, and it takes a second for it to register that she’s actually staring at her reflection in it. 

“This is real.” She mutters. Shifts uncertainly, before suddenly glancing wildly around until she spots her companions and turning to block them better from the others. “What do you want?” 

“Sakura-chan…” Naruto says, and the hand on her stomach shifts to her head instead, clutching at her hair and tugging momentarily. 

“That’s not my name.” She tells him. “That’s not my  _ name _ , and you can’t hurt me anymore.”

“I- I don’t want to hurt you Sa- ah, um, you…” 

Kakashi moves to stand in front of Naruto, realizing it’s unlikely that Naruto can talk their way through this one. Sakura doesn’t like that, body tensing, and he realizes belatedly it might be seen as a threat to her position. Sasuke cuts them both off, voice sharp and clear in comparison to Naruto’s wavering uncertainty. 

“We’re going to kill Itachi.” 

The blood soaking through her shirt is nervewracking, but there’s a faint glow of sickish-green that makes him think she’s picked up some level of healing chakra. Her teeth are bared, her arms are still dripping with a mix of water and blood, and she stares at them all. 

They hadn’t thought ahead, hadn’t planned for any of this, but it seems reasonable to go after Itachi now. A threat to Konoha removed, and justification for leaving the village on so short notice. Likely the only time Sasuke and Naruto would be willing to work together. Sakura’s condition is… worrying, all things considered, but the Uzumaki might be able to fix her up based on the skills she already showed. 

She must see the agreement on their faces, because Sakura seems to force herself into a more relaxed position. Her gaze shifts back and forth, between them all and then back to her companions. 

“If you keep them safe…” Sakura suggests, hands wringing together nervously. “If you keep my family safe, I’ll come with you.”

“Maa, Sakura chan, your family has been well cared for in Konoha.”

Her eyes are blank, her head tilts to the side. “I don’t have any family in Konoha.” She says, and her voice- it’s honest. Gravely and confused. She really doesn’t remember- Kakashi holds back a sigh, holds back his revulsion at the slivers of guesses he can muster up to explain how she could forget, just offers her an apologetic shrug. 

“Who, then?” He asks, and she gestures to the woman and the boy she’d been guarding. The woman looks up, finally, up from her charge, hands still glowing green and pressed to his sides. 

Senju Tsunade-Sama.  _ Fuck.  _ Why is she here, and why does Sakura care?  _ Family?  _ And the boy, now that he’s not shrouded by the blonde hair of his caretaker, it’s obvious it’s Kimimaro, Orochimaru’s most willing test subject and cohort. 

The wind blows. Sakura’s hair drifts, the pink strands hanging down her face lift up, caught in the breeze, allowing Kakashi a clear view at the marks on her forehead. 

“My family- the Senju-Kaguya clan.”

_ Fuck. Naruto really was the easy one of the bunch, huh.  _

He nodded, cautiously, because it’s not exactly something he can promise but he doubts Konoha will pass up the chance to take in two nin of Tsunade and Kiminaro’s caliber. Sasuke- Sasuke nods too, a brief jerk of his head in agreement, but it’s still enough to draw Kakashi’s eye.

“Alright.” Sakura says, still refusing to meet either of their eyes, but something firm in her voice with the decision. Then, before either of them could stop her, before anyone can register what her movements mean- though Karin jerks forward before the rest of them, spots something in the chakra swarming to the girl’s hands a second too late- she reaches up and claws at her eyes. Blood clots up immediately, streams down her face in rivlets that turn to rivers, and there’s sparks of ragged bright green burts at her fingertips as she does it until her eyes are well and truly ruined and healed over in a scrapped, disgraced mess. She meets their gaze head-on, now, vicious and victorious. No reason to fear their eyes anymore, not when they have no way of trapping her sight. “Let’s go kill Itachi.” 

Time passing is disjointed. Sakura can barely focus on anything, except the mounting dread building in her limbs as the knowledge that soon, she’ll be facing down That Man. It’s worth it, for Kimi-Nii and Tsunade, because That Man hurts whoever she cares about and her most of all, and she can’t risk that. Not anymore. This is her only chance to stop him, when there are others to help, others that she doesn’t mind dying like she would if it was someone from her clans. These people...they hurt her. Tore her apart, when Itachi-nii had her, and she can’t forgive them but if they want to help her kill him that’s not something she can turn down. 

They don’t talk to often. She appreciates that. The other girl, Karin, helps Tsunade sometimes, so Sakura doesn’t mind her too much when she talks. Karin-san is allowed to say what she wants, so long as she keeps making sure Kimi-nii gets better. (He was hurt, so hurt, Kabuto had tore at him with fury and sound and a sickly green light-) (But it’s okay because 

Tsunade was there, Tsunade was good, Tsunade was strong and light and a pretty green light that meant Kimi-nii was getting better, it’s okay it’s  _ okay it’s okay- _ ).

They set up camp, or at least Sakura assumes as much. She can tell where things are by chakra and water, the humidity of the air and the blood in the bodies near her, but it’s tough to do simpler tasks now. She’ll have to learn, if she survives the fight, but it’s worth it to know that no sharingan will catch her in it’s grasp. 

“What did he do to you?” Naruto asks, fragile, offput, a few days into traveling and watching. This girl is not the one he chases in his dreams. She twitches away from his outstretched arms, her body is wracked with shudders and a nervous tautness to her muscles. 

“You- he-” She begins to explain, words coming as disjointed as her thoughts. “It- it doesn’t matter. This is….real, it has to be real, he’d never have given me so many nice things if it wasn’t, so it doesn’t matter what he did because I’ll never,  _ ever,  _ let him do it again.” 

He doesn’t ask again.

She refuses to stand too close to any of them. She hovers at the edge of their vision, arms tense and face hidden by her hair. They offered her a change of clothes, something to keep her hair back, and she rejected both. Her clothes are tatters, and soaking wet more often than not, but there’s not much point in arguing. Her hand had pressed against the Uchiha crest embroidered on the back of the shirt Sasuke’d offered and shuddered, slapped the thing away and then winced in preparation for a hit that never came. 

Sasuke keeps reaching towards her, even more than the rest of them. She’s far more scared of him, too, from the way her body trembles whenever he stares too intently. It’s obvious that Sasuke looks at her and sees himself, sees another child who suffered at Itachi’s hand. Sakura hears him and just sees Itachi. 

They finally arrive and are met by Kisame-san. Sasuke and Kakashi dodge him entirely, make it past towards That Man together, and the Uzumakis are distracted by another of those men that Sakura remembers visiting Itachi-Nii sometimes, working in tandem to try and avoid an explosion that heats Sakura’s face like a roaring fire. The boy who came with Sasuke with the sword, he arrives late, pulled into the fight by Karin and it leaves Sakura with Kisame. She’s relieved. 

She straightens, hides her shaking, and senses that his hand grip tighter on his sword. 

“I’m going to kill Itachi-nii.” She informs him. His stance goes wider. 

“I can’t let you do that, kid.”

She nods. He nods back. An acceptance of reality. He would always put Itachi before her. She no longer had to rely on him, his decisions. 

A fight to the death, then. Another dead man in her wake. She’ll live with it.

She moves forward quickly, fainting high and then diving to the side to avoid his sword and quick-turning to jump for his back. He moves like silk, barely thrown by her actions, and she calls forth a burst of water to slam towards him, waiting until the last second to push it to turn into ice. It hits him just barely, enough to leave a scratch, before he shatters it with a swing, and he laughs a little. 

The sword comes gliding towards her, catches her side deep enough to begin to slice a rib, but she takes the momentum of it and moves with it, icing the ground beneath her feet to prevent any resistance. She turns the slide into a role, ignoring the mounting pain in her side, and freezes the blood and humidity above it to help keep it together a little longer. Bares her teeth at Kisame at the pain, even as she keeps moving, dodging, keeping her attacks focused on his legs where he’s most vulnerable. Manages to get a slice to the back of his knee that sends him crashing down until he catches himself, but now he can’t put weight on that leg or risk bleeding out  _ fast, _ and his sword is too heavy and large to use with only one leg as balance while kneeling. Before he can figure out a solution, because she knows he will, knows how clever he is, Sakura dives forward and slams a fist into his stomach, lets him grab her arm before she can reach it and goes with it when he tosses her, too unstable to hold her in place and do damage, and she manages to turn it into a swinging motion so that she can shove a hand against his back and  _ push,  _ a dagger out of her sweat and the water in the air and the water clinging to his back, an icicle that shoves straight through to his lungs. 

Kisame splatters blood as he coughs, sinking to the ground and shivering from cold. 

“Fucking….good move.” He tells her, voice rough, and another round of coughing starts up. 

“Thank you for the sharks.” She replies. It’s only polite. Kisame cackles. 

“Yeah, they sure suit you more now than when I first gave them to you.”

“Do they?” Sakura asks, head tilting at his words. He looks at her, blinks, eyes going unfocused. 

“Huh.” Is all he says. It’s not great, as far as last words go, but she really needs to catch up to Itachi. She whips Samehada up, spins it quickly and slams it down, straight into Kisame’s chest, between his ribs and through his spine, deep into the ground. 

She leaves him there, sword sunk into the earth and body slowly leaking blood, and does not look back. 

Her world is bigger than just two men, and Kisame is no longer the nice one.

She finds Kakashi before Sasuke, leaning against a shattered tree trunk and wheezing like a lung has been punctured. She walks past him, towards the center of the disaster zone, and freezes when she feels a swirl of energy darting towards her until it registers that it’s Sasuke, not Itachi-nii. He’s in front of her, but she shoves past him. Whatever he has to say, it’s less important than the man she knows is so  _ close  _ and so dangerous and a threat to Kimi-nii even now. 

“He didn’t- He didn’t have a choice.” Sasuke stutters, eyes wide and hands jerking out to pull Sakura back. “The village made him do it, they made him kill my family and it’s  _ not his fault _ !”

Sakura meets his gaze with the ravaged remains of her blinded eyes, and for a second, she smiles in a way that’s painfully old. Like the tattered remains of his team seven photo, all teeth and crow-eyes and dimples, and she says, 

“I’m glad for you, Sasuke-kun.”

Then it snaps, whatever was holding her in place, and she twists back away from his arms and his face and her voice turns cold. “But I’m still going to kill him.”

She bursts forward, doesn’t care how pitiful he must look or how desperately Sasuke had clung to her. All she can think about is how  _ she  _ was Sasuke-kun too, once, forced to live in his skin and suffer his pains, how this man was once a boy told to do a horrible thing, and how it doesn’t change the fact that he stole her  _ life,  _ twice, on a whim. She doesn’t care if the Hokage himself had taken Itachi in hand and guided the blade for him through every last member of the clan, doesn’t care if he’d been framed and ruined and never turned against his family, because Sakura is  _ not an Uchiha.  _ She’s a Kaguya, a Senju, a goddamn civilian, it’s all blended together but no matter how hard Itachi tried he could not make her his brother and she’d suffered for it. 

“Sasuke!” Itachi calls out, and she can feel his wavering form, can feel the water quivering in his body in a sickeningly animalistic way. She can tell from his voice that this is one of his  _ episodes,  _ like the ones she’d had to endure, that he’s looking at her and not seeing pink hair and ravaged eyes and brutal scars, but  _ Sasuke.  _ He’s seeing his little brother, stalking towards him with killing intent you could taste in the air, and it’s funny that he sounds so terrible when this is what he wanted from the start. 

Her hand is so tight on her kunai it’s turning white and shaking slightly. She clenches her other fist, then releases, and itachi drops to the ground from a sudden burst of nausea. She does it again, and his eyes burst, blood trickling down his cheeks in streams. It’s not even a thought, to manipulate his systems, to turn his body against itself. She could burst his brain in an instant but he’d made her suffer a thousand brutal deaths, and she owes him back at least one. She shoves him to the ground, and says, “You’re a terrible brother, Itachi-nii.”

And then she stabs him, again and again, over and over until he’s more cuts and holes than body, until she feels blood soak onto her hands and limbs and clothes, until she feels it splash against her face. She clenches her fist again, holds it tight, until finally she lets go and his ears and nose spill pink. She finally rolls off his body, heaves deep breaths from fragile lungs. Dead,  _ dead _ , she finally did it. 

Nobody can hurt her now. Nobody is strong enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> action scenes are hard.
> 
> some clarifications:   
> \- kimi-nii is still alive, but not doing great. Tsunade is alive, just missing a few limbs, it's cool. implication from last chapter was supposed to be that they'd defended her first, and wore kabuto down, before sakura herself came to take him on.  
> \- i was not setting itachi in an au where hes really as ~~~crazy as kishimoto originally wrote him. if canon wants to do some weird backtracking to make his actions 'okay', fine, but i'm not going to accept "he was told to do it" as justification, especially with the whole suicide-by-brother-thing.   
> \- kisame was not a good person in this. a lot of people talked about him like he was great in comments, because sakura talked about how she liked him, but it's important to look at the bigger picture. Kisame chose to keep her in Itachi's care, chose to let her get taken in the first place, chose to let Itachi do everything he did and the fact that sometimes he did nice things or put up a small protest doesn't change any of that. An abuse victim clinging to the person who actively does not harm her doesn't mean he's forgiven, it just means sakura was in a really REALLY bad spot at the time.


	11. The means, they justify the ends, my friends.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> epilogue

She wakes up and she can  _ see.  _ This terrifies her, and for a moment, she’s convinced that she’s going to look over and see Kisame-san and Itachi-nii looking back, her skinny arms from childhood at her sides, but- but.

She looks down first and sees scars that came from Kabuto and breathes out, cautious. Looks up and sees Tsunade-sama staring down, gently reaching out to touch her arm. 

“You just had to burst them, didn’t you?” Is the first thing the woman says, and Sakura feels a lurch in her stomach. Tsunade’s gaze turns sharp and she grabs at Sakura, holds her still as her body tries to shake free. 

“He owes you this much, at least.” Tsunade says, and that makes Sakura pause. If she can look at it as revenge, as a payment- she stills, collapses back to the bed. “The left is from Itachi. The right is Sasuke’s. Fucking Uchiha always did like to play  _ barter  _ with their eyes.” 

It takes weeks, for her to look in a mirror. She focuses on her clan markings first, eases the tension in her gut, before she finally glances down and meets her own eyes’ reflection, nestled in scarred skin and ravaged paths. Black, dark, one more chocolate-brown and the other like midnight blue. Black, for now, but she can feel it at the edge of her thoughts- a push, just a little burst of chakra, and she could turn them red. She doesn’t want to. She won’t. Maybe not ever. But fuck, she’ll learn to live with them. She’s learned to live with so much else before this- this is nothing,  _ nothing,  _ compared to what came before it. 

In the village, towards the edge of the wall where civilians live, there’s a neighborhood filled with blonde and red haired people that always look vaguely familiar. A blonde woman with an aged face who cries whenever she catches sight of Sakura’s hair. Sakura doesn’t like going there- she has faded memories, false or not, she can’t tell, but many of them take place in that neighborhood. She doesn’t go near there, and after a few years, the children with red hair stop chasing her down in the marketplace.

Sakura lives with Kimi-nii and Tsunade and a nice lady named Shizune. They live in Konoha, if uneasily, in a house bigger than Sakura could ever have pictured. Apparently Shizune is a part of her clan, too- Senju, maybe, or married in, but Sakura’s not one to judge bloodlines, after all. She helps with Kimi-nii and has started to teach Sakura about poisons, too, which means Sakura likes her very much. Tsunade doesn’t like to talk about why they were seperated when Sakura had first found her- Sakura thinks it has something to do with Tsunade’s past, how people seem to think she’s flighty when Sakura knows from experience she’s not. Shizune was just too capable to need Tsunade’s help, not like the Kaguya, and Tsunade wasn’t ready to admit she needed help either. Sakura starts to call them Tsunade-nee and Shizune-nee, and that makes both of them happy- Especially Tsunade-nee, since she says it makes her feel young. 

Sasuke doesn’t stay in the village much. He and Naruto and that nice Karin girl, they’re all busy traveling, and maybe it’s because it hurts to look at her and maybe it’s because it hurts to look at her eyes, but whatever the reason it’s the way things are and Sakura’s not opposed. Kakashi puts a lot more effort into sticking around. She sees him around the village often enough. She doesn’t like that, but she has to train with him anyways, because he’s the only one who can tell her how to control her new eyes. She always comes home exhausted and spaced out from training with him, and Kimi-nii will tell her nice stories and brush her hair until she falls asleep.

Kimi-nii...he can’t walk. Something wrong with his spine, and a few things wrong with his legs, but his arms are strong so he travels around the village all the time in a wheelchair and he’s started to take up gardening. He likes it, tells her every day about the new plants he’s learned of and the different wildlife of every village. It’s funny to think about, sometimes, that out of their whole family it’s the Kaguya with an interest in plants. 

He teaches her about formal dress, how to wear her hair formal. It helps stop the stares, from when she walked around in dirty clothes and tangled hair. The sharks like to visit his gardens, and they’ll sit together among his flowers and watch her summons swim above them. 

They all talk, sometimes, about leaving the village and setting up in the ruins of Uzushio, but it’s a distant thought. They’re all Konoha nin for now, and Sakura and Tsunade both like the missions they recieve and the training that is passed on so easily. If it weren’t for the ghosts around every corner, they could see staying there forever easily. 

She’s called Okurimono-san by the others. She thinks, in a few years, they’ll start to call her Okuri-chan. Kimi-nii says she should try to make friends, anyways, and some of the ANBU she works with seem...possible. Plausible, at least. She tries, if only for the smile it earns her from Kimi-nii at the end of the day.

She goes to her first festival that she can remember two years after Itachi died. She spends the day with Kimi-nii and Tsunade-nee and Shizune-nee, too, and has the nice blonde ANBU Tigress visit, and the brown haired ANBU Wolf win her a pet goldfish that she fed to her smallest Shark summon and he didn’t even mind, thought it was funny and his dog did too, and when the fireworks finally go off she lets her Sharigon flicker to life for the first time, just for a moment. Just long enough to capture the memory, the emotion, the faces of people around her. Preserve it forever.

It’s nice. It’s better than nice, even- she could practically call it perfect. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “every word you ever say, you teach the world to live that way-   
> The means, they justify the ends my friends.”   
> Robby Hecht's The Ends and the Means, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihqki-K7MiU
> 
> a couple of notes. first, thank you so much for the comments and support! hearing from you all was so motivating and exciting, and it's so nice getting to hear other people's perspectives on Sakura. I can't stress enough how much all your comments have meant to me. 
> 
> next, i know with a fic like this there's probably a nervous edge for genre-savvy people that this is an "all in her head" ending, since it's a happy ending and sakura's really powerful. well, no. its my fic and im allowed to lay down the rules and in this case, it's canon that she gets away and she kills itachi and she gets to be powerful and have a caring support group in the bargain. so, yeah, be free from doubt, this is a real and 100% bonafide Happy Ending. (also those two anbu are definitely ino and kiba, who are taking advantage of their masks to keep from potentially triggering sakura. its beautiful and they're beautiful and they're a gonna be a unit.)   
> i like to imagine sakura in a pretty blue shark-themed kimono with fancy done-up hair filled with a bunch of senbon for her grown up form. it's a nice contrast to her forced-into-uchiha-blue-tatters, shorn-hair younger days.   
> she got an eye from sasuke because one of itachi's eyes went to sasuke. its like a game of hot potato, honestly, uchiha this CANNOT be sanitary. his relationship with sakura is...tense, to say the least, since he can't blame her for wanting revenge since that was his whole deal but also hes not like. cool with her killing his bro. so he just left, and naruto's not going to just let him leave AGAIN, and i love karin but she deserves some cousin bonding before eventually being adopted (married in?) to the kaguya-senju clan. 
> 
> also- i know this last song is vaguely religious with the final reference but honestly thats not on purpose. im not religious, i just like the song's tone and the meaning of it works really well with the fic's general theme. Itachi's end is justified by his actions, regardless of the decisions along the way that caused him to make those choices. The same can be said for Kabuto, Orochimaru, etc. 
> 
> (mini addendum: Wahoo, finally finished a long multi-chapter fic!!)
> 
> i did my best with Sakura's names, sorry if the translation is wonky. Okurimono = gift, and Okuri is obviously a shortening of that but it also is a word initself which means "escapement" (among other meanings.) appropriate ;)

**Author's Note:**

> since music is a big part of the process for me i'll be naming the chapters after songs i connect to the story! that's right yall, its actually secretly 2002 and this is a song fic apparently lmao, i put my finger up 2 the prepz. the story title is very on-mood for the majority of the fic. It's from The Hush Sound's "That's Okay", a song that 14 year old me heavily connected suicidal thoughts to. It's really nice to disconnect it from that and force new associations in my brain for it. the power of sakura !!!
> 
> "You are broken and callow, cautious and safe, You are boundless in beauty with fright in your face  
> Until someone loves you, I'll keep you safe. But like them, I will give you away. And when you're gone, will they say your name? And when you're gone, will they love you the same? If not, that's okay."  
> \- https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=198&v=BgDyQnLm_Cc


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